In poetry I can let the language go, allow an image that seems out of place to enter and see what happens, always listening to the music that's being created, just like the world around us, never predictable, always shifting and intertwining, reflecting and echoing itself.

Poetry is very playful with language. I think all poetry, at its heart, is playful. It's doing unusual and playful things with the language, stirring it up. And prose is not doing that. Primarily it's not attempting to do that.

From the beginning I felt that I didn't ever want to leave the impression that the process of writing a poem is totally mysterious. I couldn't explain everything that went on in the creation of a poem, but I could try to explain as much as I knew. I thought readers deserved that. I didn't want to set myself apart as being someone special.

I'm all in favor of poets telling about the process as much as they can. And many do.

It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans.

I have thought for many years that the audience any creative writer imagines has a great effect on what gets written.

I think parts of my soul have been saved by my writing, not in the sense of escaping death, but escaping the death of the moment, perhaps.