Arrangements Quote by Michael Longley

Sometimes I am puzzling over something for months and months and the poem gets created in small bursts and rewritten a hundred times, and…

— Sarah Kay

I keep the drafts of each poem in color-coded folders. I pick up the folders according to how I feel about that color that…

— Rita Dove

I use poetry to help me work through what I don’t understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full…

— Sarah Kay

In my own work, I usually revise through forty or fifty drafts of a poem before I begin to feel content with it.

— Mary Oliver

As you continue writing and rewriting, you begin to see possibilities you hadn't seen before. Writing a poem is always a process of discovery.

— Robert Hayden

I don't think I did write any poems to fill narrative gaps. Not consciously, anyway. As much as possible, I try to discover my…

— James Arthur

That's how I always try to start my thoughts. I write them down first, eventually it turns into a poem, and if I feel…

— Benjamin Clementine

I have to make myself write, sometimes. In the space between poems, you somehow forget how to do it, where to begin. It was…

— Simon Armitage

I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than novels,…

— Ron Rash

I prefer always to think that I am creating a book, not a series of stand-alone poems.

— Martha Ronk

Most of the poems I write go through forty versions and then stay in a file on my computer. I'm not very good at…

— Nick Laird

I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and…

— Allen Ginsberg