There is so much expectation of ‘craft’ in poetry now. It sometimes seems it is the craft that certain editors look at first in a poem, and craft the first thing a poet praises about another poet’s poem.

I myself prefer the craft that makes itself invisible.

If we look at the history of modern art, and the accusations the establishment made against some of the greatest artists of all time—from Monet to Van Gogh, from Cezanne to Picasso, from Pollack to Warhol—the rhetoric was always the same: that’s not art. I could do that. They can’t draw.

Because of their expectations of craft, people missed the art entirely.

There is outsider art. Traditional art. People with aesthetics that were not formed in American MFA programs.

It is unfortunate how rampant educationism is in the art world.

Perhaps poetry in America is attempting to distinguish itself so much that it accepts only those poets it considers distinguished.