We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.

I think that the dark side of MFA programs is that they're generating more poets than the culture can absorb and there are more people writing poetry than possibly read it or can certainly earn a living around it.

It's not important - it's not necessary that you read everything. What is necessary is that you care about things that you read and that you find something that really matters to you and you try and make something like that.

There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.

First of all I think that poetry is very noble and I always have with me the sense of the nobility of poetry.

You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.

I put down these memorandums of my affections in honor of tenderness, in honor of all of those who have been conscripted into the brotherhood of loss.