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

I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.

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

In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out.

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

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

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.