I do not suppose that anyone not a poet can realize the agony of creating a poem. Every nerve, even every muscle, seems strained to the breaking point. The poem will not be denied; to refuse to write it would be a greater torture. It tears its way out of the brain, splintering and breaking its passage, and leaves that organ in the state of a jelly-fish when the task is done.
Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.
I never deny poems when they come; whatever I am doing, whatever I am writing, I lay it aside and attend to the arriving poem.