Fiction Is About Intimacy With Characters, Events,

The Young People Have Mtv And Rock And Roll. Why Would They Go To Read Poetry? Poetry Belongs To The Stone Age. It Awakens In Us Perceptions That Go Back To Those Times.

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.

Alchemy Is The Art Of Far And Near, And I Think Poetry Is Alchemy In That Way. It's Delightful To Distort Size, To See Something That's Tiny As Though It Were Vast.

Poetry, Almost By Definition, Calls Attention To Its Language And Form.

One Of The Most Powerful Devices Of Poetry Is The Use Of Distortions. You Can Go From Talking About The Way A Minute Passes To The Way A Century Passes, Or A Lifetime.