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.

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

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

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

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

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

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.