The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

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.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.

It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.