Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.

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

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

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

Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

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.