A Lot Of My Students Are Asian-american,

I Did Not Have A Very Literary Background. I Came To Poetry From The Sciences And Mathematics, And Also Through An Interest In Japanese And Chinese Poetry In Translation.

Philip Larkin Has A Tough Honesty And Sense Of Humor That I Find Irresistible, As A Contemporary Poet.

If A Poem Is Not Memorable, There's Probably Something Wrong. One Of The Problems Of Free Verse Is That Much Of The Free Verse Poetry Is Not Memorable.

When You Have An Idea For A Story, You Want Those Characters To Reach As Many People As You Can. I Think You Normally Think Of Prose As A Way Of Doing That. It Fits Our Time, The Culture.

With Prose You Can Incorporate More Details, Develop Scenes, Sustain The Tension In A Special Way. Prose Has Its Own Speed.