Young Writers Only Take Off When They

Neither Of My Parents Has Been Very Sensitive About My Writing.

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

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.

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.

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.