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

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" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" A lot of my students are Asian-American, and it has been thrilling to watch them break through the stereotypes into something alive and surprising. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I love to create interesting textures with language. You can do it as long as it seems like a discovery. "

" I have taught students from the New York City area so long I have a special affinity and rapport with them. It surprises me sometimes that there are students from anywhere else. "

" Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back. "

" The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character. "

" One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice. "

" I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation. "

" Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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