How do you know when you’ve written something good? Or something that you’re happy with?

I tell my students this sometimes. If a poem is thrown against a pane of glass, that pane of glass should shatter. Every poem should be staggering, every book should be staggering. I can’t tell you how I know if something is good, but I can tell you that I worry a lot about things that I want to happen and things that I didn’t want to compromise. I wanted to get those themes across accessibly. I wanted to clear access for the reader. By the time I walk away from it, I feel like I don’t have any more to say. I think that’s why the ending is so short. I wanted the feeling of surviving something. I wanted the ending to end bare. Because I accomplished that feeling, to me, I thought I wrote something good. As a person, I have insecurities and fears, but I don’t feel this way about this book. I feel very confident about what this book does. It was very hard to write.

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