Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

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

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.

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.

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.

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.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.