I think that as long as you have other poets before you and that you can learn from them, then it's always open ended for you.

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.

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

A certain kind of poetry looks back at experience from an older perspective.

You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it's well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that's not up to you.

I think that's a connection that you can only hope for. It's not something that you can make because it needs someone else.

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.