With poems that are very specifically laid out, do you plan those in advance or is it all just a ride that you don't expect?
It's kind of a combination. I don't think too far ahead. I certainly don't determine the tone. I might have a subject matter, say with that “Statues in the Park,” I knew that the subject of the poem was going to be statues in the park. It might have drifted away from that at some point. But I never know where a turn is going to take place. Turns or shifts are very necessary in my poems because the beginnings of my poems are uninteresting. Sometimes I know, here is the subject, statues in the park. But I never know the resolution. And I would say that 90 percent of the thrill of writing is moving toward an unknown destination which you are actually going to create. The poem is kind of a pathway to its ending. It's the only way to access its own ending and that progress through the poem to the ending is the most compelling part of writing for me.
Gene Myers Interviews Billy Collins