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.

When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

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

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

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.

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

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