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.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

In the late 60s and early 70s, I did get interested in voices, and in narration and embodying the voice, making the poem sound like a real person talking.

Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.

I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.