"For the most part, I don’t know where a poem will lead, but I’ll have a sense of the theme or texture to start with. It can be an image, a quote, or a memory, and I’ll slowly start seeing what develops on the page. Typically, when I start holding strongly to an idea, it doesn’t turn out well because there’s no discovery. Finding the structure is like tuning an instrument until you hear the right note. And with free verse, every poem has to find its own internal logic and structure. You figure that out during the process."