You are almost not free, if you are teaching a group of graduate students, to become friends with one of them. I don't mean anything erotically charged, just a friendship.

'Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons' is a kind of novel in verse about the arc of an urban lesbian love affair - and I suppose there is a certain amount of voyeurism in the consumption of fiction! The 'Sancerre' poems here are more contemplative and about the relationship of the individual to local and wider histories.

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.

My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.