In actual fact, I have been an academic - a college and university teacher and scholar - for much of the last 45 years, and only rarely a writer.

I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.

New formalism is writing with language as flow, like the flow from a dam, running through a desert that has had no rain for decades.

You need to be distracted.

I have some weak poems in that new collection, which is why I'm not ready to send the collection out yet.

People called me a tomboy. That was the term used then. I was very much someone who was comfortable in male clothing, and even later when I grew up, I was constantly wearing dungarees, wearing guy shirts.

If I could write a novel while I'm walking, I probably would.