The Poetry Home Repair Manual (2005)
Poems that change our perception are everywhere you look, and one of the definitions of poetry might be that a poem freshens the world.
. . . .
But how do you come up with ideas?
You sit with your notebook, and after a while something begins to interest you. The poet William Stafford described it as being like fishing: you throw out your line and wait for a little tug. Maybe all you get is a minnow, three or four words that seem to have a little magic, but even that can be enough to get the writing started. And a minnow can be pretty good bait for bigger fish.
Official Entry Blank (1969)*
From “Man Opening a Book of Poems”
Turning a page as if it were a rock, / he bends and peers beneath it cautiously, / Waving its wet antennae to the light, / a poem in its narrow, ambling track / stops dead and lifts its mossy mouth to him.
(* This one’s out of print, so check your library.)
The Wheeling Year (2014)
From “January”
Part of my morning ritual is to put on my shoes without sitting down, and by this demonstrating to myself that I am not so old as to topple over into a steaming heap when trying to balance on one leg.
What are you reading these days?
You’ve got a story. You’ve got that urge to write. But where do you begin?