If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.
Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.
I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.
Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.
I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.
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.