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

The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new.

The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.

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.

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.