I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language.

I was once doing a question and answer period with the novelist Jane Smiley in a bookstore and someone asked us what our processes were and Jane said hers and then I said mine and Jane said, "Well, if I had a student like that I'd force him never to write like that again because you could never write a novel in the way that you write poetry."

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

I would keep in mind to a young poet that you are entering into something that is very important, that has always been important in terms of human concerns.

The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.

I don't think poetry will die, but I think that poetry does demand a certain kind of attention to language.

I didn't sit down then and start writing poems, but it was in the back of my mind.