Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

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

Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.