Q&A …

… A.M. Juster on Writers Using Twitter and Poetry He's Reading. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Family always came first, public service a close second, and writing, as much as I have loved it, a distant third. I wrote a lot in my head during slow commutes and idiotic mandatory meetings, and sometimes I could put pen to paper in airport terminals and hotel rooms. It’s an increasingly disdained model, but it worked for T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams.

Non-academics shouldn’t be embarrassed about their work—I think their jobs often provide better experience to support good poems than an academic career does.