I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

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

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

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

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