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

Now, that can be a traditional form or it can be something you're inventing. It can be the development of a metaphor, the working through of a metaphor.

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.

And a lot of poetry is putting yourself back into the state of wonder that you have before things when you're a child. It's not only a joyous wonder, it's sometimes a grief stricken wonder.

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.

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

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."