The more poetry you have in the head the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all.

Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry as such.

Dealing with poetry is a daunting task simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world.

I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry.

My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things but they are the state of human existence.

It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated unlike poetry which is more equal.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

I know I'm not a wordsmith. And I don't write poetry. Sometimes I think I should because it's really helpful. But I always wanted to write novels.

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

I try to show what it is about language and music that enthralls because I think those are the two elements of poetry.