"i think that... something like a revolution in poetry has been
occurring over the last 20 years. and the effect of that is
enormously to expand the definition of what poetry is. without
expanding the definition of what poetry is, literature and culture is
going to be left with a limited number of irrelevant models of poetry
as objects of aesthetic reverie but of no relevance to thought or
experience or contemporary living."

"finding the appropriate structure/form for a work takes a long time,
and usually for me a period of trial and error, before i can find
something in which the structure really does help propel the work,
keep it going, and provide some kind of rationale, some logical basis
for it to proceed."

"i was interested (maybe all people are when they're very young) in
the romantic notion of writing everything that you know. and i had
as an adolescent written various short stories with interminable
prologues in which i would explain the story and allow it to
elaborate into a vehicle for everything i know. and usually the
prologues had footnotes and footnotes after the footnotes...
there is a kind of encyclopedic ambition that inhabits romantic
writing and to some extent i have roots in that tradition."

- all by lynn hejinian