Every poet has a certain amount of "stuff." That's what you draw from for imagery. The more stuff you know well, not simply intellectually but sensually, emotionally, intimately, the wider the pool from which you draw.

The mind wraps itself around a poem. It is almost sensual, particularly if you work on a computer. You can turn the poem round and about and upside down, dancing with it a kind of bolero of two snakes twisting and coiling, until the poem has found its right and proper shape.

We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.

I stayed under the moon too long.I am silvered with lust.Dreams flick like minnows through my eyes.My voice is trees tossing in the wind.I loose myself like a flock of blackbirdsstorming into your face.My lightest touch leaves blue prints,bruises on your mind.Desire sandpapers your skinso thin I read the veins and arteriesmaps of routes I will traveltill I lodge in your spine.The night is our fur.We curl inside it licking.

Shall I tell you something I've been noticing? The mistrust this society has for women. All kinds of experts and officials are terrified because so many women are working. They really think that women have to be coerced into having babies and raising kids.

One of the best gifts you can give a poet is to present them with field guides - to rocks, to stars, to birds, to wildflowers, to trees and bushes, to butterflies, to reptiles and amphibians. Because when you look at anything long enough to be able to identify it, you see far more clearly and you make a tiny beginning at understanding the life, the place, the history of that bird or rock or mammal.

Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.