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" 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. "

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" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I seem to keep returning to my father in poems because his personality was so extreme, so driven. He did everything to excess. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts. "

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

" I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" We have a lot of long narrative poems written in the 20th century, but they're not very well known, and they're not read by very many people. "