The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader and that meaning doesn't exist or in here in poems alone.

The way to become a poet is to read poetry and to imitate what you read and to read passionately and widely and in as involved a way as you can.

In a way, that's also a recognition that Dante needs Virgil and that the Inferno needs the Aeneid and that the epic needs a model and that for Dante to write this great poem he needs someone to come before him and he turns to Virgil's text, especially book six where Aeneas goes down into the underworld. And for me, that's a model of the poet's relationship to previous poetry, to another poetry as calling out for guidance.

In high school I was leafing through an anthology that our teachers had given up and I found a poem, I go, "That's so strange. This poem looks so much like my grandfather's poem."

Sometimes the title comes to you at the beginning, sometimes it comes at the end. The very best way in my experience is when it comes in the middle.

I started then to try and shape something rather than just express it and when I started to shape something and to imitate other poems that were written by other people, when I had tried to integrate my reading and my writing I was on my path.

A poem is a hand, a hook, a prayer. It is a soul in action.