Quotable: Anne Sexton on the composition of poetry

“Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly, almost, and I get very tense before I’ve told the truth–hard. Then I sit down at the desk and get going with it.”

–Anne Sexton, interviewed by Barbara Kevles for The Paris Review