High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this.

One, I have a wonderful publisher, Black Sparrow Press; as long as they exist, they will keep me in print. And they claim they sell very respectable numbers of my books, so I guess, and it's true, every place I go, my books are in libraries and on bookshelves.

I think that's what poetry does. It allows people to come together and identify with a common thing that is outside of themselves, but which they identify with from the interior.

I definitely wish to distinguish American poetry from British or other English language poetry.

American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.

Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it.

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.