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I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.
I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.
If people associate me with a region, that's fine with me.
In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.
Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.
Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form.
Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.
Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.
The fact that something is in a rhymed form or in blank verse will not make it good poetry.
What actually makes poetry poetry is of course impossible to define. We recognize it when we hear it, when we see it, but we can't define it.
With prose you can incorporate more details, develop scenes, sustain the tension in a special way. Prose has its own speed.
Young writers find their first audience in little magazines, and experimental writers find their only audience there.
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... →
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