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

I’m always talking about how the poems I am most obsessed with are like people: complex and unknowable and with a huge capacity for many different emotions.

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.

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

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.

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.

There’s not a single shred of evidence for the multiverse. If, in order to explain this universe, you need a theory that invents an infinite number of parallel universes – that’s not a very good theory.

They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day.

I need to be able to explain myself in context.

I had this one rock band I used to listen to, but I forgot the name of them.

When my words fail to explain how I feel let my kiss tell you all you need to know.

Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?

I don’t have to explain anything to anybody.

If I were to ask the famous Henry Ford to come over here and do what I tell him to do, would he do it? Never! But if I were to make a thousand-year-old corpse come alive before his eyes, he would jump at the chance to stay here and wash my clothes!