I also like poems that are haunted by a structure or a narrative, or poems that frisk flirtatiously at the boundary of sense.

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.

One of my favorite titles of an art piece is "Première Communion de Jeunes Filles Chlorotiques Par Un Temps De Neige" or "First Communion of Chlorotic Young Girls in Snowy Weather" by Alphonse Allais. It's essentially a joke of a title, since the accompanying image is a simple white square.

Writing directly from a feeling of anger or sadness is difficult, but if you distract part of your brain with word games, the ignored emotion often tiptoes in.

Usually form seems to find me in the process of writing a poem, though I have nothing against starting out with the form.

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.

S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle // off my hand until I realized what it was / and began to grant it its sovereignty.