Unless I have something already moving through the mind, I don’t go to the typewriter at all. The world has so many poems in it, it has never seemed … - Archie Randolph Ammons

[On inspiration]: I think it comes from anxiety. That is to say, either the mind or the body is already rather highly charged and in need of some kind of expression, some way to crystallize and relieve the pressure. And it seems to me that if you’re in that condition and an idea, an insight, an association occurs to you, then that energy is released through the expression of that insight or idea, and after the poem is written, you feel a certain resolution and calmness. Well, I won’t say a “momentary stay against confusion” (Robert Frost’s phrase) but that’s what I mean. I think it comes from that. You know, Bloom says somewhere that poetry is anxiety.

CALLING
Wind rocks
the porch chair somebody home.

Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings.