One Writes A Poem When One Is

I Had A Period When I Read Nobel Prize Winners. I Figured They Had To Be Good. I Discovered Some People I Didn't Know About, Like The Icelandic Writer Halldor Laxness, Who Wrote "independent People." .

Louise Gluck, C.k. Williams, Thomas Lux. A Lot Of The Poets That I Like Are The Ones That Influenced Me As A Writer.

I Majored In English In College And That Was My Major In Graduate School Before Switching To Creative Writing. I Read A Lot Of [charles] Dickens And [anthony ] Trollope, But There Was Lots Of Stuff I Hadn't Read Like Thackeray's "vanity Fair," Which Is So Well Written And Funny.

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.

I Like It To Be Quiet, And It Usually Occurs In The Morning. There Are Three Or Four Places In My House Where I Can Write And I Like To Keep Moving Around. The Moment I Find Myself Falling Into A Necessary Routine, I Change It. I'd Rather Not Accumulate Superstitions.