I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.

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.

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

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.

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

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.