Mike Young quotes:

If anxiety is the major force of our contemporary condition, a lot of poetry - including my own, mostly - sort of tries to escape that, fly off into magical thinking or bewilderment or whatever.

All poetry is political, to some degree.

Poetry is a way of always paying attention to the world for me; a way of letting the world stick to me instead of being anxious or estranged, just being present in the world.

All is context. Choose yours carefully, where you have a choice.

I do increasingly feel like becoming a better writer is about trying to find new ways to solve the same problems over and over again, and I'll maybe be a good writer after I have solved the same problem ten million times.

I think no matter how snarky you try to be, poetry will always find a way to make a spiritual goal out of what you're doing.

I think the team will think this was an O.K. year. Some guys had career years, but the reality is that we didn't get it done at the end of the day.