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

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.

I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start.