The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Looking at the sky last night and the moon in the first fresh dark, just a few stars, bright with their cold flares, I had a little crumpled thought, 'Oh well, the moon. It's just another place like California.' One's imagination drags its feet as we are inexorably hauled into the future.

I do not usually revise much, though I often cut, particularly the end or toward the end of a poem

It seems to me that readers sometimes make the genesis of a poem more mysterious than it is (by that I perhaps mean, think of it as something outside their own experience)

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate

I wish i could press snowflakes in a book like flowers.