I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

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.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

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

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.

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.