I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.

When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt.

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.