I do have a tendency to invest inanimate objects with human qualities.

Not everyone is going to like every carnival ride.

I think there are people who do write regionally, because that's their subject matter - the way the sunset looks over a strip mall, memories of flirting at the ice rink, waking up to a deer at the window... Up to now, that hasn't been mine.

I think poetry involves heightened noticing or imagining as well as creating a certain made shape. On the other hand, that shape can be made just by pointing at something and saying, "That's a poem".

I don't see much difference between prose poems and flash fiction (I've often taught the latter as the former), but then I also don't see that much difference between art and poetry.

Read widely (in and outside of your own genre), keep a notebook with you at all times. Do something that scares you every now and then. Try to locate your own frequency, knowing that one year your voice is on AM 532 and the next it's on FM 92.8.

I have poetic failures all the time. Many failed poems. I try not to publish those, though some have slipped into each book, since I can't always tell they're failures until later... or I don't want to admit that they are.