How does a poem begin?
Most of what I write is written in that weird state between sleep and waking. This is where my raw material comes from. Later in the day I will type it into a document that won’t get opened again for three months (I used to wait six). Part of my daily schedule is to open the document created three month prior to that day and give it a first revision and a title, if it doesn’t already have one. This keeps things interesting, because I have no idea what I’m about to open up and work on. And I usually have only a vague remembrance of writing it. It’s a little like revising someone else’s poems. Occasionally, the writing is promising, oftentimes it is less so. One way or the other, I require myself to work with what I have before me until I’ve turned it into as good a piece as I possibly can. If it’s still promising, this can go on for days, weeks, months, or years.
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