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

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

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

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.

With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.