 The problem, for me, with the writing programs is that they produce a terrible uniformity of product. |
| Every so often I find some poems that are too good for the readers of The Atlantic because they are a little too involved with the nature of poetry, as such. |
| The more poetry you have in the head, the more poetry you will understand because you will be getting to the roots of what it is that makes people write poetry at all. |
| It is a way we reassess our past. We can do that in poetry in ways we can't do in prose. |
| Poetry is composing for the breath. |
| The trouble with the performance poets is that they don't seem to have read anything. So there is not a real sense of the poetic tradition in their work. |
| I think poetry has lost an awful lot of its muscle because nobody knows any. Nobody has to memorize poetry. |
| If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets. |
| Frost is the most sophisticated of poets. |
| I like poems that are complex. |
| Dealing with poetry is a daunting task, simply because the reason one does it as an editor at all is because one is constantly coming to terms with one's own understanding of how to understand the world. |
