I am a tiny seashell
that has secretly drifted ashore
and carries the sound of the ocean
surging through its body.

When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program, we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing, and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry.

Rhythm is sound in motion. It is related to the pulse, the heartbeat, the way we breathe. It rises and falls. It takes us into ourselves; it takes us out of ourselves.

'Liberty Brass' is a small machine that unfolds in a single unpunctuated wave, which is interrupted by the rotating sign, the refrain. Each part is meant to do its work in relentless progression.

Depression is a feeling without a cause. Mourning has a cause.

Poets have always celebrated grief as one of the deepest human emotions.