The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new.

Neither of my parents has been very sensitive about my writing.

We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people.

A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising.

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.

One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime.