Several of the poems in the third section of The Look of Things deal with Catholicism. Some, like "The Christological Year," are devout, while a poem like "Immaculate Mary Breathes the Air We Breathe" seems more satirical. How do you see your Catholicism?

I think of myself as a reluctant Catholic, certainly not a satirical one. I think of insurrection as being a part of my faith, as much as piety. Obviously you can't be gay and be in the Church without rejecting a great deal. That's someting irreconcilable. Finally, of course, the Church is greater than the men who lead it, and there's too much about it that's helpful to me--prayer and communion, to name just two--to reject it outright.

I have borrowed some forms and ideas from George Herbert, who, in addition to being a poet of piety, is a poet of insurrection. His divided self is what draws me to him. That there are always factions warring within us is an essential truth I like seeing transmuted into poetry.

You have been very successful in being published; your work appears in the New Yorker often. How long did it take for that success to come?

It took a long time to come. I'm 38, and I started sending my poems to the New Yorker at 23. I've saved all my rejections to show to friends and students who think that everything just sort of arose at once--it's not at all that way. I came close for years and years and then they took a great deal at once.

Was that because of a change in you or in the magazine?

It had a lot to do with the courage of one editor there. I remember with my poem "40 Days and 40 Nights," which tells the experience of receiving an HIV test--it was an extraordinary fact that [New Yorker Poetry Editor] Alice Quinn took that poem when she did. To my knowledge, there had never been a poem like that in the magazine, that dealt so explicitly with what was then considered a gay experience. That was an extraordinary fact. Now, with Tina Brown, the lid is very much off and there's no measure of censorship at all.

"40 Days and 40 Nights," like an earlier poem, "Papilloma," is a very graphic description of a medical procedure. Is that an important theme to you?

There's so much that's unaccountable about the body, about hospitals and clinics. I think that mysterious unaccountability of things is something I'm drawn to. The clinic juxtaposes pregnant mothers and HIV-positive young men. This is the kind of terrible irony about the world that I am drawn to.