Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.

Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.

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.