THC: Are there any young American poets that you feel are under-appreciated?

CS: There’s a long list. I don’t know who’s young anymore. There’s a wonderful poet I like very much called Mary Ruefle. There is always a lot of talent among young poets.

THC: I’m curious as to when, what time of day, you write.

CS: Well, that has changed at different points in my life. I used to write mostly late at night. Now I write in the morning, very early in the morning, like 6 am. Or I write in the afternoon, after lunch. Very rarely anymore at night.

THC: Is there any way for you to tell whether you’re going to be able to write on a particular day?

CS: No. You really have to start by putting pencil to paper. Every time I start something from scratch, I have so many things that I’m working on—files and files of half-finished and unfinished poems—so I look at them. And then that sets something else off. I very rarely sit down in front of a blank piece of paper and say, “What shall I write about?” It’s something ongoing.

THC: How many drafts does a poem go through?

CS: A lot. It’ll take about a year, a year and a half, for a poem. Sometimes the very simple poems you just can’t seem to get right.

THC: What attracts you to the English language?

CS: Well, I don’t know Serbo-Croatian very well anymore. [Laughs.] I developed a love of language by reading great literature in English. A poet, as Joseph Brodsky used to say, essentially works for the dictionary. I am an employee of the dictionary.