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

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

It was less a literary thing than a linguistic, philosophical preoccupation... discovering how far you can go with language to create immediate, elementary experience.

With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

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.