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.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

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.