Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

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

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

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

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

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

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.