Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.

That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnoticeable elsewhere in the public domain of an unlovely cynicism about human character.

Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.

When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.