Neither Of My Parents Has Been Very

A Poem In Form Still Has To Have Voice, Gesture, A Sense Of Discovery, A Metaphoric Connection, As Any Poetry Does.

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.

One Of The Biggest Changes That Ever Occurred In My Life Was Going From The Isolation Of Working Part-time As A House Painter In Henderson County, To Cornell, Where Everybody Was A Literary Person.

Maybe The Example Of Southern Fiction Writing Has Been So Powerful That Southern Poets Have Sort Of Keyed Themselves To That.

I Learned To Impersonate The Kind Of Person That Talks About Poetry. It Comes From Teaching, I Think.