Writing involves, first of all, listening to an internal "speech." Not everyone's internal speech is equally interesting. Most people, in fact, are like myself: the flow of consciousness is mostly trivial. The trick is to be able to recognize and extend significant fragments, make them into something more. What makes this tricky is that significant fragments might seem merely trivial. In a way, it's not that different from writing flarf poems off google searches. Most of what turns up is seemingly without any poetic value. The poetic talent comes from recognizing it, not from producing it. What I'm calling the internal speech is itself structured, influenced, by a multitude of discourses. This is what is called "influence," in fact. I am especially susceptible to these voices. (Like Frank O'Hara's line, "So many voices in my head.") Form can be considered a sort of validation / legitimization of this internal speech. Look how Berrigan used the sonnet form to organize / legimitate the fragments. Or it can actually structure the internal speech itself, in the sense that one thinks "in" the sonnet form rather than imposing it on a previously inchoate stream. Revision is another step similar to the first: it involves listening to one's own work, selecting, eliminating, judging, negotiating with form and structure.

Maybe that's why most of my poems are so short. Going on too long seems willful to me. I am "writing" rather than "listening."

It seems inappropriate to use the word "craft" for this process. Does carving a bowl out of wood involve the same process of "listening"? Maybe it does! But in this case, the important thing is not the "craft" aspect of the process at all. In other words, we would redefine the word "craft " itself, or speak of the poetics of carving the bowl.