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

Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places.

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.

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.

When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.