"Fresh or changing conditions ferment fresh forms." — Edward Hirsch

The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.

When I was young, I wrote everything, and I thought I would be an all around writer, that I would write everything.

My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.

The sole literary presence from my childhood was my grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Latvia, who eccentrically copied poems into the backs of his books. After he died, when I was 8 years old, my grandmother gave his books away, and his poems were lost.

The very good thing about MFA programs is their democratizing. They bring a lot of different people to the table.

Throughout his work, Philip Levine's most powerful commitment has been to the failed and lost, the marginal, the unloved, the unwanted.

When poetry separates from song, then the words have to carry all the rhythm themselves; they have to do all the work. They can't rely on the singing voice.

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Fresh or changing conditions ferment fresh forms.