It Was Less A Literary Thing Than

We Have A Lot Of Long Narrative Poems Written In The 20th Century, But They're Not Very Well Known, And They're Not Read By Very Many People.

In The Late 60s And Early 70s, I Did Get Interested In Voices, And In Narration And Embodying The Voice, Making The Poem Sound Like A Real Person Talking.

When You Have An Idea For A Story, You Want Those Characters To Reach As Many People As You Can. I Think You Normally Think Of Prose As A Way Of Doing That. It Fits Our Time, The Culture.

Among The American Contemporaries I Read With Most Enjoyment Are Several North Carolinians. I Think The Best Poetry Being Written These Days Is Being Written By Southerners.

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