Southern Poets Are Still Writing Narrative Poems,

In The Best Fiction, The Language Itself Can Become Almost Invisible.

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.

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.

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.

It Was Less A Literary Thing Than A Linguistic, Philosophical Preoccupation... Discovering How Far You Can Go With Language To Create Immediate, Elementary Experience.