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

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.

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 is so close to music, not just in cadence and sound but in silences. That's why, to me, I can't talk about prose poems. I can talk about poetic prose.

I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.

I'd rather call prose poems something else, for clarity - something like "poetic prose," prose that contains a quality of poetry, but not poems.

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.