Distinctly American poetry is usually written in the context of one's geographic landscape, sometimes out of one's cultural myths, and often with reference to gender and race or ethnic origins.

I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.

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

I think one of the things that language poets are very involved with is getting away from conventional ideas of beauty, because those ideas contain a certain attitude toward women, certain attitudes toward sex, certain attitudes toward race, etc.

But I am not political in the current events sense, and I have never wanted anyone to read my poetry that way.

American poets celebrate their bodies, very specifically, as Whitman did.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.