Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

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.

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.