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.

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

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 Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

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.

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.