One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.

Other than fiction and poetry I tend to read history.

A poem is a window that hangs between two or more human beings who otherwise live in darkened rooms.

I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.

It was as if pain were a room he had entered and the door had been locked behind him.

He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back in his former life or that one could take one moment and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell, instead of constantly being hurried into the future by good luck or bad.

My poems always begin with a metaphor, but my way into the metaphor may be a word, an image, even a sound. And I rarely know the nature of the metaphor when I begin to write, but there is an attentiveness that a writer develops, a sudden alertness that is much like the feel of a fish brushing against a hook.