One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

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.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

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.

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.

I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing.