In your new book, The Dance Most of All, “Ovid in Tears” is my favorite. When I first read it, I literally felt chills down my spine. How did you come to write this poem? What inspired it?

The Years. If you live a long time. It’s hard to say. But it’s kind of you to say this about my poem.

How do you squeeze so much history into this poem?

I cheat.

Is there a poem or two in your new book that are your favorites?

No. There are so many.

What do your poems mean to you?

Being alive.

Were the poems in the new book written after Refusing Heaven was published?

Some new. Some old. It’s hard to focus on any one poem.

What poems of others matter to you?

So many. My life for so long was reading. You write not from a book but from life. The world was so much alive. It all goes together.

You have such a distinct poetic voice, your images, metaphors, your rhythms are unique. Even your phrasing is your own, sort of like the difference between Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett singing the same Cole Porter song, say, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” How have you avoided the influence of other poets?

If that’s true, thank you. But how can I tell if others have influenced me? I do believe in my own poems. My poems are not struggles. The poem is what I am. It’s what was there.

One of your distinctive poetic traits is the declarative statement, even when such statements may not be true, such as “Ghosts are by their nature drawn to/the willows” from the poem “Becoming Regardless.” How does this technique add to your poems?

It was so natural. I really never thought about it.

You use the word “machinery” in “Painting on Plato’s Wall” in the new book (“We cobble together/from this and those of our machinery/until there is suddenly an apparition that never existed before”), and use this term in several poems from various books. Can you explain what you mean by this “machinery”?

Life is a machine and it’s because I am living it. The poems are always there in the machinery. I lived so much with the poems in my life. I wasn’t looking for the poems. They were there. It was a struggle to try to make it perfect. But it was always there. There’s a lot of art, but there’s also a lot of struggle in writing the poems. I like that struggle.