Pound's translation of Chinese poetry was maybe the most important thing I read. Eliot a little bit later.

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

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

Distance not only gives nostalgia, but perspective, and maybe objectivity.

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

Neither of my parents has been very sensitive about my writing.

I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess.