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.

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

There's the brilliant audacity of youth that poets strike upon in their earliest work sometimes that they never can hit upon again.

Fiction writers learn about the development of metaphor, the use of rhythm, the way that language is compacted in order to express the feelings of - express their own feelings and the feelings of their characters.

Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can't do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best.

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.

So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again, but I keep writing it over again.