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

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" Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that. "

" In the later books I am much more at home in the use of language to describe things. I had never thought of that until a critic pointed that out. "

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

" I considered going to film school; I took a course in film and was very interested in filmmaking as well as film writing. "

" The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry. "

" The best books of our times have included the three mature volumes of Philip Larkin. They're very short books of poems, and very carefully arranged. "

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

" I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry. "

" What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it. "

" With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed. "

" I love to compare different time frames. Poetry can evoke the time of the subject. By a very careful choice of words you can evoke an era, completely throw the poem into a different time scale. "

" One of the most powerful devices of poetry is the use of distortions. You can go from talking about the way a minute passes to the way a century passes, or a lifetime. "

" Young writers only take off when they find their subjects. Since almost everyone has a family and stories about family, that is often a place to start. "

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

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

" Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle. "

" I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry. "

" Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems. "

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

" I encourage students to pursue an idea far enough so they can see what the cliches and stereotypes are. Only then do they begin to hit pay dirt. "

" If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable. "

" Fiction is about intimacy with characters, events, places. "

" I write as a way of keeping myself going. You build your life around writing, and it's what gets you through. So it's partly just curiosity to see what you can do. "

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

The Most Important

" Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet. "

" The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new. "

" I love chapbooks. They're in some ways the ideal form in which to publish and read poems. You can read 19 poems in a way you can't sit down and read 60 to 70 pages of poems. "

" Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there. "

" In the late 60s and early 70s, I did get interested in voices, and in narration and embodying the voice, making the poem sound like a real person talking. "

" 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. "