The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.

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

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.

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.

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

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

The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new.