If You Read Three Books A Day

When I Was In High School In The '50s You Were Supposed To Be An Elvis Presley, A James Dean, A Marlon Brando Or A Kingston Trio Type In A Button-down Shirt Headed For The Fraternities At Stanford Or Cal.

Fiction Writers Have Their Own World, And Poets Have Their Own World, And Literary Criticism Has Sort Of Passed Over Into Cultural Studies In The University, And So On. They Seem More Disconnected From Each Other Than They Did When I First Began To Write.

Imagination Runs Through The Places Where We Live Like Water. We Need Both Things-a Living Knowledge Of The Land And A Live Imagination Of It And Our Place In It- If We Are Going To Preserve It.

If You're Imaginatively Responsible To The Place You Live In, You Understand The Watershed.

The Professionalization Of Poetry, Or The Balkanization, Has Come Out Of The Fact That When You Apply To Most Creative Writing Programs, You Have To Choose Your Genre.