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

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.

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

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 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.

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

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.