“Poems have always been a place for questions for me. Not answers. And I have a lot of questions these days.”

It’s not that I want to be, but it’s a fascination of the mind and it plays a role in why I want to live my life a certain way.

One of the reasons I’ve felt so connected to poetry throughout the years is because it’s the only art form that has breath built into it. And I need that breath now. I need that breath so much. So, yes, it is a refuge for me. Absolutely.

I’m always telling my students that the weirdest thing is the truth. I mean, the fact that we get up in the morning and put on clothes is weird.

I have been writing. Even when I intend not to write, I find myself writing. I’m currently in a place where I should be putting together the fifth book, but then more poems are coming. It’s exciting and somewhat daunting.

All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles and ghosts of men, and spirits behind those birds of flame. I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes,

Moving away from “useful” doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health.

The more I am aware of my mortality the better person I am and the better I am at choosing a life that is aware of its beauty.

I kind of hate it.” Or, “Oh you wait tables? I didn’t know that was something people did.” I say it can be invigorating because, on some level, we have to evaluate what we do and why we do it almost daily.

You know how we are when a new book of poems is at last coming together – all frenzy, distraction, and bounty? It’s as if I’ve turned into summer itself.

Precise, graceful, and generous, the poems in SuperLoop, seem to be born out of a deep, careful attention and a profound compassion.

The longed-for return of the bees. Unaffected and inherently hopeful, Callihan’s work is as merciful as it is moving.

Language can also be play and music and beauty and desire and grief and rage and truth without always having to be message-driven or purely functional.

We have to explain ourselves to people all the time. We have to say, “Yes, I am a unicorn, believe in me.”

There’s so much rage in the world now and I’m finding poems to be the place where I want to stay. I rage and rage and then write a poem and return to breathing.

I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.

Sometimes the quiet observer, sometimes the kid in the center of the messed-up carnival, these poems are the fireflies you’ve missed all winter

One said of suicide, As long as one has brains one should not blow them out. And another answered, But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.

As human beings, don’t we need questions without answers as well as questions with answers, questions that we might someday answer and questions that we can never answer?

When I get there I am not going to be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Moses? Why weren’t you David?’ I am only going to be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Zuscha? Why weren’t you fully you?'”

The idea that if people are just friendly and demonstrate they want peace, that will be answered with good will – that is really naive.

People will ask me, “How do you approach writing books for young readers differently than for adults?” My answer is always: I don’t change anything about the story itself.

More data is not always the answer.

So every day till the end of this campaign, Ill answer any question anyone has on government, but if you have a question on religion, please, go to church.

Just how do I design if not with prototyping? An excellent question. The short answer is ‘on paper.’