Poems, to me, do not come from ideas, they come from a series of images that you tuck away in the back of your brain. Little photographic snapshots. Then you get the major vision of the poem, which is like a giant magnet to which all these disparate little impressions fly and adhere, and there is the poem!
Carolyn KizerHe said, "You have pigs in this poem; pigs are not poetic." I got up and walked out of that class and never went back.
Carolyn Kizer