At Sage Hill about thirty years ago I was in a small group of poets working with Patrick Lane as our teacher. At the end of one of our afternoon sessions he assigned everybody homework.

“Figure out what makes a good poem,” he said. “Write it in as few words as you can, and bring it in tomorrow.”

My specifications for a good poem became the epigram/introductory poem for my
second book, the walnut-cracking machine.

how to tell a good poem

a good poem is built
like a rickety platform
attached by a single nail
to the last thing you know

and it’s a really good poem
if the nail doesn’t hold

One thing I love about writing poems is how you think you know where you’re going but as the poem winds down it grabs the wheel and swerves off the cliff or into the ditch or blasts off into another dimension. Even though you’re still the one putting the words on the page, you find yourself in the rarified atmosphere of a place you never expected to go and maybe don’t even recognize.

That doesn’t always lead to a good poem. Sometimes it’s astonishing. And sometimes it’s one word short of what you’re trying to say, and you never finish it. God forbid.

I began writing in the late seventies and my first poem was published in the late, great Canadian Forum, November 1979 issue. When I got news of the acceptance, I danced around the kitchen holding my nine-month-old son in one arm and the letter of acceptance in the other hand. My five-year-old son was still at school. Two more babies, and teaching elementary school meant I took a break from writing. By the time my youngest son was ready to begin school I was ready to get back to it.