When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.

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

I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else.

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

When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.