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.

But, the best times I have found, in my life, are late at night or early in the morning and I think it's because you're outside the social realm.

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.

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being.

And when you are entering into poetry, whatever stage you're at, you are participating in something with a very long and noble tradition.

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.

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.