What triggers a poem for me is not the same as what triggers an essay. My mind is geared now to looking for, or to watching out for, the image that attracts my attention or the phrase or the strange juxtaposition that strikes me bodily, or an odd question or supposition.

Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.

To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem.

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.

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.

My object when writing prose is to write as clearly as possible. I think I know what I'm saying in prose, and I want others to understand it and to be able to restate it.