We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.

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.

One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.

Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

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

We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.