I’m always reading lots of things simultaneously:  A new mystery by Michael Connelly (so-so writing, great plot).  Corman McCarthy’s new novel The Passenger (brilliant writing, baffling storyline), Sandi Stromberg’s excellent forthcoming book of poems Frogs Don’t Sing Red, and UH alum Niki Herd’s poetry chapbook Don’t You Weep.

Just as I’m getting tired of books that reflect endlessly and earnestly on the self of the poet — the hardships and traumas and recoveries — I come across a book that does just that, and brilliantly.

Two books by Paul Fussell: The Great War and Modern Memory and Poetic Meter and Poetry Form.

Don’t write to please people in your creative writing workshop, to get through a workshop unscathed, or to make your teacher praise you.  Doing this leads not to great writing but to unobjectionable writing.  I made this mistake all the way through college and only later did I realize I could have been taking risks (and failing productively) instead of writing tame little poems.

Good question! I can’t think of anything I ever bought that was instrumental for my writing, beyond the tools to write with.  But when I was 20 years old, I sold my very first poem to a literary magazine called The Cimarron Review.  They paid me $15.00 for it and I spent that money on Bei Dao’s The August Sleepwalker, a book of poems.  I still have that copy thirty years later.  On the inside cover, I wrote “I got paid for writing a poem!”