just do it

That’s not to say that one has to be chased around Pamplona by bulls to gain experience. It could be something as slight as the difference between the poem one might get from a poet strolling past a construction site versus the poem one might get from the poet who is pouring concrete.

Either could produce the better poem, of course, but the latter’s will be more deeply informed by experience. “To change your language,” as Derek Walcott says, “you must change your life.”

John Barr in « American Poet in the New Century » from the September issue of Poetry