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

I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do.

The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.

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

Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.

I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery.

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