Fiction Is About Intimacy With Characters, Events,

The Idea Of Avant-garde Art Is A Very Suspicious Thing To Me, The Idea That Poetry Is New And It Keeps Being New The Way Chevrolets Every Year Are New.

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.

The Best Books Of Our Times Have Included The Three Mature Volumes Of Philip Larkin. They're Very Short Books Of Poems, And Very Carefully Arranged.

Some People Swear By Writing Courses, But Whether It Really Helps American Poetry, I Have Doubts.

I Don't Think Poetry Is Something That Can Be Taught. We Can Encourage Young Writers, But What You Can't Teach Them Is The Very Essence Of Poetry.