In a painting, you can’t make out whether the artist painted the left eye before the right eye. In Chinese calligraphy, you can see the progression of the artist’s stroke.
You have to learn a few things, which you do along the way, but basically, poetry is a matter of the ear. Iambic pentameters or what constitutes a stanza comes naturally – your ears will know.
Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don’t have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
Those books of mine that are remunerative – I’m not talking about poetry here – take years to write, and I am never sure they’ll be successful. So writing is a risk in more senses than one.
Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music-not too much, or the soul could not sustain it-from time to time.
