Gertrude Stein said, "I write for myself and strangers." I would say I write for myself, strangers and the great dead.

A stress on the system and I think a painful thing for many young poets who are looking to find a life in poetry that they're not going to be able to find.

As a reader you have a task to do, you have something to do. You bring your experience to it. It's not all inherit in the poem.

Scholars of the Hebrew bible define something they call wisdom literature and I would say clearly the poetry of wisdom is something that comes with age or that might come with age which has to do with reflecting on experience.

So, the process of revision, it's not systematic. But for me, I mean, I know a lot of poets who write out a draft and then revise it and I think they're happier people. But, I'm just not able to do it that way. I need to just continually examine it as I do it.

And what I've found over time is that for me to write a poem that I think is worthy that I can live with, two things have to happen.

So, the result though is by the time I've got something, it's been worked over so many times that although I do make changes as the end, often by the time I've gotten it, it's pretty much completed.