A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective.

I think one of the things that distinguished my work from the beginning when I was in college was my turning towards poetry from other countries.

A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective.

After my grandfather died I went down to the basement of my family house where my family kept books, anthologies and things and there was an anthology without any names attached to it and I read a poem called Spellbound and I somehow attached it to my grandfather's death and I thought my grandfather had written it.

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.

And my experience is the best titles, for me, emerge in the process of writing. They don't usually come at the very beginning and hopefully they don't come at the very end because then it's getting late in the day.

I think in terms of educating a group of readers, MFA programs are very good. I just think the model of MFA programs in which a young poet goes through the program, publishes a series of books, gets teaching jobs, that's a bit at risk.