I like to talk about the composition of poems as involving a series of allegiances that we keep as long as we can, but that we're likely to modify and refine as the poem starts to insist upon itself.—Stephen Dunn, "The Guardian Angel," in Introspections: American Poets on One of Their Own Poems, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini
After drafting the poem through to its tentative conclusion on the second morning after I'd begun it, I thought about it all day. As I carried out my errands, I conducted a craft discussion with myself about what the poem needed. I was aware that with the word "power" I'd simply named one of the poem's main thematic concerns—a move in composition that I almost always consider a mistake. Naming the theme—which usually occurs in the title or the conclusion of a work—often robs a poem of its natural ambiguity....—David Huddle, "About my 'Basket': Looking for Closure," in Introspections: American Poets on One of Their Own Poems, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini
