"And they went in unto Noah into the arc, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life." —Genesis 7:14-15.

One might see a relationship between the title of the collection and the variety in form and content. Can you tell us more about why you chose this title?

I had such a hard time choosing a title—none of the poem titles or even lines seemed exactly what I was going for in terms of an overall theme. But when I re-read this in Genesis, the words “two and two” really stuck out to me. My book begins with a poem about Noah’s ark and ends with a love poem for my husband Nick Carbó and this idea of coupling is echoed throughout the book in the long poem about the twin towers, the double sestina, and the pantoum (which relies on the doubling of lines.)

You often use humor to make social critiques, like in the poem "The Problem with Woody Allen." What is it about using humor, irony, and social satire as a means of getting to the "truth" that you find most challenging, rewarding and advantageous?

I’m never sure when or if a poem is going to go into humor. And sometimes I’m not even sure a poem is funny until someone else reads it and laughs. Other times, I think I’m writing a funny poem and my husband or friend reads it and tells me it’s very sad. As Steve Allen once said, “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.” In terms of social critique, I believe satire can provide a way in that avoids didacticism. My saying Woody Allen is a pig for marrying his stepdaughter and ranting about the way women are treated in his movies is one thing. But the truth is I love Woody Allen movies—I just can’t help it. I think he’s brilliant. So social satire helps me get to the subject in a more complex way.

One of the most powerful poems for me in the book is "Love Which took Its Symmetry for Granted." I've read dozens of 9-11 poems but this one really moved me. I notice that several narratives are woven into the poem including: a speaker's sick father, reports from survivors and witnesses, a more cynical/critical narrative voice, and statistical and factual information. How did you come up with this collage effect?

Thank you for saying you liked this poem. I was teaching a collage and collaboration class during the fall of 2001. It was a literature class, but I also had the students do some experiments with creative writing, so I think having planned that class all summer opened me up to collage making. My friend and collaborator Maureen Seaton writes almost entirely now in collage so she was definitely a big influence. I, like everyone else, was extremely freaked out about 9/11. I was sure I had nothing to add in terms of poetry. I had lived in NYC from 1985-1999 and was a recent transplant to Florida. I still had and continue to have many friends in NYC. I think, among other things, I felt a bit of survivor’s guilt. I started printing out e-mails from my friends in New York. I started printing out forwards, political and otherwise. Then one day in early October I just took out my hi-lighter and gluestick and scissors and began to shape a poem. I actually had 11 friends “perform” the poem in October of 2001. I had been invited to read, but really wanted to hear this poem and the organizers of the reading let me have others read instead. It was performed again, by students at Miami Dade College, on September 11, 2002.

Often poems on heavy subjects like 9-11 fail because they lapse into sentimentality or become too didactic. I feel that your poem does not fall into either trap. Were you consciously thinking of ways to avoid these potential problems as you wrote the poem?

I actually avoided trying to sum up anything. Very little of the poem is my “own” writing—much of it is found text and e-mails from others. The prose blocks about my own life were from e-mails I sent to others. So I hope the poem has an ease to it—I was indeed trying to avoid cliché and sentimentality and I realized that in some ways the everyday immediate writing was more intense than any philosophy or commentary. When I received, for example, the forwards about the educators who perished in the planes that hit the towers, their names alone were poetry to me.

You speak of the emails collaged into the 9-11 poems. What are your thoughts about new kinds of textuality like emails or blog prose that did not really exist before the internet? Do those new kinds of prose rub off on poetry?

Yes, I do think that poetry is very open at the moment to cross fertilization of all sorts. There is a whole new language of abbreviations surrounding e-mails, like LOL or BTW, that have become also part of our speaking language. I think web addresses are even changing the way people read. When web addresses first came out, I had a hard time figuring out things like nickforkids.com When my niece for showed me this link, I saw the words "fork" and "ids" in there before I saw "for kids." Now I can read almost any website right away, squished words and all.

While I don't blog (the time factor, really), my husband has several blogs and keeps me up on the poetry blog world.

In the Acknowledgements, you thank your parents for allowing you to "tell their story," as in the poem "The Accident" which tells of how your parents are involved in an escalator accident. What are your opinions on poets, such as Lowell and more recently Stephen Dunn, who use very personal experiences (Lowell's wife's letters and Dunn's infidelity) as subject matter? Is there a limit to how intimate a poem can be with such subjects?

That is a question that I struggle with—and the reason I felt I had to ask my parents’ permission to publish this poem. They were both involved in a horrific accident September 10, 2003—two years to the day of my father’s heart failure, which was the day before September 11, 2001. He was actually watching the second tower hit from his hospital bed. The escalator accident story is really THEIR story. While I took care of them afterwards, I wasn’t there at the time of the escalator malfunctioning. It felt invasive to even write anything about it at all, but all I could do was write about it. I wrote prose poems as well, but the poem in the book (which I hoped fit the themes of couples--I refer to them as Jack and Jill) is a canzone. It’s a form that Nikki Moustaki has called “a sestina on speed” since the end words come so fast and repeat so often.

Stephen Dunn’s new book The Insistence of Beauty is actually my favorite of all his books—and I love all his poetry. I think he does an amazing job of chronicling the destruction of a marriage and the uneasy joy of entering a new relationship. The book’s narrator is extremely vulnerable and honest. I remember thinking for a brief moment when I first read it—wait, shouldn’t the ex-wife get her own book and the new woman get her own book? But putting the two experiences together in two sections is a brilliant move. The sections seem to haunt each other in an uncomfortable and moving way.

A friend of mine, Laurel K. Dodge, wanted to ask you what poem or book you’ve read recently that excited you, that caused you to tell anyone and everyone you could about it--and what was it about the poem or book that thrilled you?

Please tell Laurel and everyone else to take a look at a poem called “I stopped writing poetry…” by Bernard Welt. It’s from Best American Poetry 2001, edited by David Lehman and guest editor Robert Hass. It’s one of those poems that embraces everything—highlighting poetry’s failure in our culture through an amazing poem that actually celebrates poetry. It’s smart and political and honest as anything I’ve ever read about the uneasiness most poets have being a poet in the first place.

Some poets enjoy reading criticism of their work (positive and negative) while others find it uncomfortable and ignore all criticism written about them. Which of the two are you? Do you read criticism of your work? If yes, does it effect how you write? Do you use it to your benefit if it seems objective and honest?

For me it is never easy to read negative criticism. I can still quote almost every negative thing written about me in a review—I’m chatty and unforgettable, etc. But I’m not one of those flowers who can’t bear to read her reviews. I’m getting better at reading them and not obsessing. What really helps me is this—early on I had a friend say to me, “If you really believe the good stuff written about you, then you’ll have to believe the bad stuff. If you really believe you’re a genius every time you win an award, then you’ll have to believe you’re a sub-par hack every time you don’t.” So I listen to everything, try to take in criticism if I feel it makes sense and I can learn from it, but I don’t beat myself up and/or gloat depending upon what is written. I don’t “believe” it in my core. I really admire reviewers no matter what they write about me because I’m so grateful they exist, that there are smart readers of poetry out there with opinions.

In discussing Dunn you link honesty and vulnerability. Do you have any thoughts on why it is there seems a link between the two?