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 encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt.

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

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

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.

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.

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.