A Lot Of My Students Are Asian-american,

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.

One Of The Biggest Changes That Ever Occurred In My Life Was Going From The Isolation Of Working Part-time As A House Painter In Henderson County, To Cornell, Where Everybody Was A Literary Person.

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 Tell Students They Will Know They Are Getting Somewhere When A Scene Is So Painful They Can Just Barely Bring Themselves To Write About It. A Writer Has To Draw Blood.

Young Writers Find Their First Audience In Little Magazines, And Experimental Writers Find Their Only Audience There.