In the preface to Tea you mention that you’d already written Lunch. How is that Tea became your first published book?

I wrote a manuscript called Lunch, but it isn’t the same as the book entitled Lunch. I suppose when I wrote that preface that I figured the title would be tossed out, along with the accompanying manuscript. But the title stuck around, and the poems I wrote after Tea became Lunch. Some of the earlier poems survived as well, though they often went through significant changes. And some of it was just the same.

How far into the process of writing Tea and Lunch did you realize you were working on a trilogy, with the poems of Cocktails in the offing?

Hard to say, now. I do remember that when I sent the manuscript of Lunch to Wesleyan, they wrote back and said they weren’t interested, but that they were looking forward to Cocktails. So I must have already been envisioning it by the time Wesleyan changed their minds about Lunch. Wow. Now even I’m confused.

If you agree that Tea, Lunch and Cocktails make a trilogy, what is the overall arc that holds the three parts together?

Well, here’s another way in which time fucks you: I think I used to have a pretty clear idea of how those books were related. Now I’m not sure.

If you were to name-drop for a minute or so, what artists (writers, musicians, filmmakers, etc.) would be part of your personal tradition?

Jean Genet, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Gertrude Stein would be in the top three. Fellini! Barry White. Are we talking influences or just people whom I admire? I’d add the guys who made Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies to both lists. And Ovid. And Jackass.

Before picking up Cocktails, I had begun to think of you as sort of a “free verse Thom Gunn.” But religious ideas never surfaced strongly in Gunn’s work, so when I found myself deep in the religious imagery of Cocktails I had to let go of the Gunn comparison. And I was left wondering: What role do religious ideas play in

I’m not trying to be coy, but I don’t know that I understand anything. I’m still trying to figure out aids on a theological level. Is it the Rapture? Is it a test for the compassion of people who call themselves Christians? And I know unhesitatingly that, as little as I understand of aids, I understand even less of life. But that doesn’t bother me. I know that there are profound mysteries throughout creation. We cannot unlock them. So I try to smash the window and crawl through that way.

Let’s say that tomorrow you get a call from the editors of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. They want to include you, but there is room for only one poem. At this point in your career, which of your poems would you pick and why?

I’d tell them to pick; that’s their job. Besides, you’re asking me to make Sophie’s choice. If I get only one poem, I want it to be whatever I write next.