"I would rather write poems than prose, any day, any place. Yet each has its own force." — Mary Oliver

At the time I was growing up, literature was involved with the so-called confessional poets. And I was not interested in that. I did not think that specific and personal perspective functioned well for the reader at all.

I'd rather write about polar bears than people.

Wasn't it Emerson who said, 'My life is for itself and not for a spectacle'? I have a happy, full, good life because I hold it private.

Writers must... take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems.