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

Other people have noticed more of an evolution than I have and so I'll try to tell you where I'm coming from and also relate it to what I think other people perceive.

Learning to live what you're born with is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.

Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.

From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.

But I don't think that poetry is a good, to use a contemporary word, venue, for current events.

I think I'm a very good reader of poetry, but obviously, like everybody, I have a set of criteria for reading poems, and I'm not shy about presenting them, so if people ask for my critical response to a poem, I tell them what works and why, and what doesn't work and why.