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.

One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character.

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person.

If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.

The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.