If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.