The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.

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.

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

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

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.

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.