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.

"Time" does not mean "occasion."

I have a muse who's very powerful, but I'm still a hopeless deadbeat of a poet.

I do want to do the entire alphabet. There's in [Walker's Alphabet] a poem called "A Life" in that grouping. I was going to change that title to "A."

Quite a while ago, I made a conscious choice to place my teaching first, so it was very ego-invested. That decision wasn't a good thing in some ways.

The poem might come to you as you're preparing to teach a lecture, right? And when you say, "no" to that occasion, that poem is gone.

If you've been in a symbolic struggle long enough, even when the struggle is over, you don't know it's over.