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.

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.

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

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.

If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.

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

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