Interview: Benjamín Alire Sáenz

...I think back on my Stanford days and being with the Stegner Fellows, who were my colleagues–fiction writers and poets. In terms of raw talent, I had the least amount of it. I’m probably now the most published because I think I wanted it so badly. And the other thing I think is very important to becoming a writer is can you be alone? A lot of young people can’t be alone. You have to be able to enjoy your own company and not want to run from yourself, because you just have to spend so much time alone.

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Interview with Shara Lessley/ Shara Lessley poem

...I like to think of the line as a kind of choreography that both extends and counters its sonic movement. At times, the line underscores music: it seems to dance with it, to provide the kind of support as would an ideal partner. A phrase's volume is increased via enjambment....
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Two-Headed Nightingale
(also the title of her first book coming out with New Issues Press in 2012)

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Interview: GC Waldrep

I workshopped those poems at Iowa and people loathed them. Dean Young, my dear friend, hated them with a passion. Cole Swensen my advisor, who is a wonderful poet and also a dear friend. She said ‘I must not be the intended reader for this work,’ I believe is what she said.

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Kay Ryan: The Art of Poetry: Interview

It’s poetry’s uselessness that excites me. Its hopelessness. All this talk of usefulness makes me feel I’ve suddenly been shanghaied into the helping professions. Prose is practical language. Conversation is practical language. Let them handle the usefulness jobs. But of course, poetry has its balms. It makes us less lonely by one. It makes us have more room inside ourselves. But it’s paralyzing to think of usefulness and poetry in the same breath.

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mini-interview: oliver de la paz

...the "Requiem" poems were originally part of a long poem, "Requiem for the Orchard," which was first published by Guernica. I originally thought of composing a crown of sonnets to serve as a bridge for what I perceived to be a manuscript mess in the collection's earlier form. So I went into the writing of that long poem with a heck of a lot of intent--I wanted the poem to service what I thought were the needs of the manuscript in its current state. I felt the manuscript needed a cohesive voice and a narrative map.

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Two Interviews/ Sampsonia Way

Brenda Cárdenas:
The United States’ literary world would have ignored Latino writing and kept it always in the margins without the help of institutions like Letras Latinas and presses like Bilingual Review Press or Arte Publico Press.
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Carl Phillips:
Even the position of prayer could be the position used to give someone a blow job.

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Tomás Q. Morín interviews Ai (2003)

...I think poetic monologues are more trying than theater monologues. Watching some plays I think, God, if that were a poem you could never get away with that. You have to be so much more attuned to language as a poet than in some of the other forms. Of course, our form is so much smaller. Really, to get someone's attention in a poem, I feel you have to grab them in the first line or the first few lines, otherwise forget about it.

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Shara Lessley interviews Nick Lantz

...organization for me usually amounts to spreading things around evenly. If I have two poems that mention dogs, say, I don’t want those poems next to each other. And I try to alternate tone and length, when possible. If I have poems that are part of a series, I try to space them out. In a few cases, though, I’ve had poems that I really wanted in a particular spot in the manuscript because of something specific the poem did.

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interview with mark doty

Here's a broad generalization or two. American poets tend to be inclined to go through the self to get to the world; that is, we're not automatically embarrassed to take up space on the page with evocations of our own feelings or experiences. We may be less likely to think of ourselved as representative citizens, or as persons shaped by historical forces. We don't necessarily regard the self ironically.

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interview: jeannine hall gailey

In some ways, I was writing the book for my little brother – maybe a nineteen-year-old version of him, anyway – an intelligent guy who reads avidly, but is more likely to know the latest video game trends than the latest Pushcart winners.

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Chelsea Handler interviews: Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson

Chelsea Handler interviews Bridget Marquardt & Kendra Wilkinson from "The Girls Next Door".

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