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.

The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged.

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 tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.

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.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

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