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

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt.

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

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person.

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.

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.