You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.

Sometimes I have a feeling that I just can't get rid of. Sometimes there's an experience that I want to write about that I have to get off my chest. Sometimes there are some words that appeal to you.

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.

We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.

The idea of a poem as a message in a bottle means that it's sent out towards some future reader and the reader who opens that bottle becomes the addressee of the literary text.

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.

Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them.