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.

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.

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.

Our sense that things are transient, that everything is passing and then if you want to save something from the endless flux of experience and the world's movement, you have to set down a stake and try and make something that will last.

And sometimes you look at the first poems by someone and you go, "They have freshness and a sense of wonder that is never recaptured again by that poet."

The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.

Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.