A Lot Of My Students Are Asian-american,

With Prose You Can Incorporate More Details, Develop Scenes, Sustain The Tension In A Special Way. Prose Has Its Own Speed.

I Tell Students They Will Know They Are Getting Somewhere When A Scene Is So Painful They Can Just Barely Bring Themselves To Write About It. A Writer Has To Draw Blood.

One Of The Biggest Changes That Ever Occurred In My Life Was Going From The Isolation Of Working Part-time As A House Painter In Henderson County, To Cornell, Where Everybody Was A Literary Person.

I Don't Think The Creative Writing Industry Has Helped American Poetry.

The Decision To Write In Prose Instead Of Poetry Is Made More By The Readers Than By Writers. Almost No One Is Interested In Reading Narrative In Verse.