Eileen Myles

Fred Moten is a poet I really love because he changes who is telling the poem all the time.

Dogs are a companion species. It's about time - you have an animal for about 15, 16 years, a generation. That time holds so much. You might have had five or six relationships with human beings but one dog.

When we have relationships with animals, we often make up who they are.

Poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling.

Literature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us.

To be a poet, it's a challenge to do it in poverty, to do it in wealth. To do it in the academy, to do it in a relationship where you're happy. Everything changes the game. To do it in the awkward state of love, despair, dying. You just have to work it.

When somebody's in love with you, they think it's amazing you've written them a poem, and when they don't love you anymore, they hate those poems. They wish those poems would go away.

I really just love reading. It's my favorite thing, performing my poems live. Reading by reading, I just kind of follow my nose.

Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You're always home.

I tend to view my life as an accident, almost as a dream.

I thought 'Chelsea Girls' was going to change my life.

If the poetry world celebrate its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence, poetry would wind up being a largely female world, and the men would leave.