“Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.”
Poetry“I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.”
Poetry“Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.”
Poetry“Philip Larkin has a tough honesty and sense of humor that I find irresistible, as a contemporary poet.”
Humor“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.”
Poetry“A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.”
Poetry“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.”
Art“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.”
Poetry“The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.”
Poetry“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.”
Poetry“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.”
Home“The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.”
Poetry“Our most famous writers are Faulkner and Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor. It would make sense that the poetry would reflect some of those same values, some of the same techniques.”
Famous“The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.”
Age“I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.”
Poetry“Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.”
Poetry“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.”
Poetry“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.”
Poetry“Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.”
Poetry“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.”
Poetry“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.”
Poetry“I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.”
Poetry