I like the way former U.S. poet laureate Charles Simic puts it in this interview: Prose is like walking to the store to buy a holiday ham; poetry is like standing on the corner and whistling. It’s a difference between wanting to tell a story or express a series of ideas, and wanting to speak [...]

There’s no rule on how it is to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly. Sometimes it is like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

One day I’d like to construct a writing seminar, maybe just two or three hours long, drawing lessons from the songs of Joni Mitchell. I’d include “For Free” — such a great song — for its subtlety and structure, its narrative arc. I was listening to it recently after reading Vivian Gornick’s book, The Situation [...]