Language is remarkable, except under the extreme constraints of mathematics and logic, it never can talk only about what it's supposed to talk about but is always spreading around.
From Howard Nemerov
Mostly the thought and the verse come inseparably. In my poem Poetics, it's as close as I come to telling how I do it.
Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.
Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.
Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
5 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives