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 attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.

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

I think poetry will survive and I don't think it will be the end of poetry. Our tremendous onslaught of mass media all the time that we're suffering and we don't really know how to think about, I think that puts certain things at risk.

Then I found another one, grandpa's poem. It turned out it had been written by Emily Brontë and it wasn't my grandfather's poem at all, although my response to it, I think, was pretty much the same, I just had the author wrong.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.