Poetry, Almost By Definition, Calls Attention To

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.

Part Of What We Love About Poetry Is The Fact That It Seems Ancient, That It Has An Authority Of Ancient Language And Ancient Form, And That It's Timeless, That It Reaches Back.

I Write As A Way Of Keeping Myself Going. You Build Your Life Around Writing, And It's What Gets You Through. So It's Partly Just Curiosity To See What You Can Do.

The Fact That Something Is In A Rhymed Form Or In Blank Verse Will Not Make It Good Poetry.