Reading is migratory, an act of transport, from one life to another, one mind to another. Just like geographic travel, reading involves estrangement … - Jenny Xie

I try to distance myself from systems of literary production and strains of thought that place primacy on publishing and publishing quickly. Ironically, one way to keep myself going is to surrender completely to the fear that I won’t write again, and try to access some recessed zone where any need or ambition to write poems, or to write for others’ eyes, falls away. Once I’ve been emptied of those needs, I find I can allow myself to be filled once more. Reading invigorating work, putting myself in the presence of formidable voices and minds, or submerging myself in slow films usually helps, too.

I gravitate toward language that radiates a certain energy for me.

I consider myself a Buddhist practitioner, but still a beginner, even though I’ve been meditating on and off for many years now. When I was growing up, no one in my household was religious. I’d always been curious about religion, probably because it was bound up for me with questions about how to live as a person when you’re granted such a brief stretch of time. I remember picking up a Buddhist book during my senior year of high school, when it was dawning on me that I would soon experience a new level of autonomy.