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.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

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.

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.

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.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.

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