You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

Never discuss the poem you contemplate writing. It's like turning on the outside spigot. It takes all the pressure off the upstairs bathroom.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.

On the best day, there's no context for the moment. Often, the best writing and pieces have been lost to not having been digitized.