One of the most important differences I see between prose and poetry is the music of the language.

A poetic list is a talent in itself. You can write a list of things, and it can be boring.

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.

As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called lyrical, they often contain closed statements of what is only suggested in the poetry.

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.

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