Today's been a good day for me. I wrote a new poem. And I can feel others rumbling around inside. I tend to write poetry in spurts--one poem will lead to more until for some reason I stop. Then I'll have a time that poetry's just not coming so that's when I revise and polish what I've written.

Other writing--novel, short story, nonfiction--is very different for me. When I'm in a non-poetry project, I set regular times and work on it daily. Sometimes it comes like poetry in spurts for which I'm grateful. Sometimes I sit and squeeze out words. Usually, it's something between the two. I warm up and manage to write what I planned and maybe a little extra. Poetry never seems to work that way for me.

The real work for me in poetry is all the revision I do. And of course, that's what really makes the poem. My friend, Jose Faus, is always reading something he's just written at a reading. I never read a poem until it's been through that long process of multiple revisions. Joe laughs at me about it. (Probably justifiably.)

But today it looks as if I'm moving back into a poetry period, always a happy time.