Neither Of My Parents Has Been Very

Some People Swear By Writing Courses, But Whether It Really Helps American Poetry, I Have Doubts.

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

I Seem To Keep Returning To My Father In Poems Because His Personality Was So Extreme, So Driven. He Did Everything To Excess.

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

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.