“I love that poetry is a form that honors history, and I’m always going to be doing that, and I always want to be doing that in my writing—and I think that’s an act of love, acknowledging what has happened before you”

“So, for people putting together a first book, it’s really just the self you want to see in a physical form. And it’s okay if you don’t like that self, too. Because who does?”

“But the poem itself is smarter than you. It needs to be better than the poet, and the only way to do that is to de-center yourself.”