In 1971, his reputation was beginning its ascent when he was interviewed by The Ohio Review. He described what he felt after completing a poem:Well, after the brief, and I think normal, period of exhilaration, there is a let-down. What I’ve done is written another poem. And what I have to do is write another one.

He preferred penning poems to typing them, because, he said, “A poem can appear finished just because of the cleanness of the typescript, and I don’t want it to seem finished before it is.” When he typed a poem, he said, he was reading it, but when he wrote a poem by hand he could hear it.