Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it.

Don't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love.

A good creative-writing teacher can save a good writer a lot of time.

A creative writing class may be one of the last places you can go where your life still matters.

...an imagined town is at least as real as an actual town. If it isn't, you may be in the wrong business. Our words come from obsessions we must submit to, whatever the social cost. It can be hard. It can be worse forty years from now if you feel you could have done it and didn't. It is narcissistic, vain, egotistical, unrealistic, selfish, and hateful to assume emotional ownership of a town or a word. It is also essential.

Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.