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.

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

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.

One of the biggest changes that ever occurred in my life was going from the isolation of working part-time as a house painter in Henderson County, to Cornell, where everybody was a literary person.

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

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

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