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.

With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

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.

Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.