Back together Quote by Sarah Kay

There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.

— Dana Goodyear

When I'm assembling a book I concentrate as though I were writing a poem. A truly imagined arrangement will indicate gaps and generate new…

— Michael Longley

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 write poetry to figure things out. Any time I’m trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for…

— Sarah Kay

The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem,…

— John Burnside

Things that I have a hard time being able to fully grasp, sometimes writing the poem helps me work through it. Or I get…

— Sarah Kay

Usually a poem takes shape accoustically - a line or a pair of lines will repeat itself in my ear.

— Thomas Lynch

Sometimes I have something stuck in my head and that directs the rhyme that I'm writing with.

— Courtney Barnett

A poem is but a thought, a mere memory caught at play. From hand onto paper, bleeding thoughts emerge.

— Robert M. Hensel

Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens.

— C. K. Williams

I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.

— Howard Nemerov

I see the shape of the poem before I start writing, and the writing is just the process of arriving at the shape.

— Carol Ann Duffy