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.

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

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

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

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

Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.