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.

Poetry almost by definition calls attention to its language and form.

The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end.

Among the American contemporaries I read with most enjoyment are several North Carolinians. I think the best poetry being written these days is being written by Southerners.

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

You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does.

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

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen a lot of them will.

Poetry isn't a profession it's a way of life. It's an empty basket you put your life into it and make something out of that.