You Have To Really Dive Deep Back

I Don't Think American Poetry Has Gotten Any Better In The Past 35 Years. Oddly Enough, Creative Writing Programs Seem To Have Been Good For Fiction, And I Would Not Have Predicted That.

Some People Want To Call Me An Appalachian Writer, Even Though I Know Some People Use Regional Labels To Belittle.

In The Later Books I Am Much More At Home In The Use Of Language To Describe Things. I Had Never Thought Of That Until A Critic Pointed That Out.

I Seem To Keep Returning To My Father In Poems Because His Personality Was So Extreme, So Driven. He Did Everything To Excess.

It Was Less A Literary Thing Than A Linguistic, Philosophical Preoccupation... Discovering How Far You Can Go With Language To Create Immediate, Elementary Experience.