We're all just a part of this large, spiraling, constantly fluid hierarchy and changing. At some points in your life, you feel crushed by that, depending on who you come in contact with.
It took me awhile to not be ashamed to be a poet in the business environment, and to be a business person in the poet environment.
Most of my writing friends are working in academia. Most of my business school friends are always talking about bringing companies public, and money, and making money, and lots and lots of money. It's just a different environment.
I do think that given my background as a poet, and also I work in a different field, you're sort of neither here nor there.
Whether people like your work or not, but it's also based on a lot of other things - geography, who you happen to connect with and where they sit in that ladder - and all of that felt really isolating and disheartening to me when I figured it out.
I've always just liked writing poetry, but it's much later that I've discovered that there's this whole poetry world out there, that you almost have to be accepted into, like this little club.
Most people are trying to go digital, and trying to do different things with poetry. McSweeney's is going in the opposite direction - going more classic, and retro, which is all coming back.
I think e-mail and social media and all that has made me feel way less isolated than ever before.
I think I've always felt very isolated, and I'm sure lots of poets do.
I've never thought about the con of living in New York as a writer. Because I always think, Oh, what fun to be around so many writers. Because I've never been around so many writers.
Sometimes people ask me to do stuff in New York, like "Can you read at this thing?" And I say, "Nooo, I can't just get on a plane with these two screaming children - I can't just get rid of them on such short notice and take vacation and fly over to New York."
I've read a lot more than most of the people that I know, except for one of my really close friends reads way more than I do.
I love being part of poetry conversations. I love talking about what I've read.
The whole process of getting a book published is just part of the process. The last of the process that I enjo
Our lives are short and everything sort of regresses to the mean.
I think I love humor in poetry, but not that slapstick cheap easy humor, but that uncomfortable, "did she say that out loud?" kind of humor.
I've always wanted editors that actually edited my poems.
I'm a total bottoms-up kind of person. I like things to bubble up.
In general, I find that poets spend a lot of time thinking about themselves, and not a lot of time thinking about other poets, or other poetry. Unless they think about how it affects them, or how it could impact them.
