"Each project I work on develops differently. I mostly work in series of some sort, in groups of related poems that become something like serial poems, though they’re not arranged in, say, a chronological sequence. Sometimes I’ll write a whole poem all at once but that’s fairly unusual. Mostly it’s a constellation of different elements, sometimes written with big gaps (like days or even weeks) in between. I reread these pieces to figure out what they belong with, what other ideas they’re related to, how one thought answers or complicates another. So writing and rewriting are continuous and almost simultaneous. Often I get the momentum and feeling of a poem before all the pieces are there and then it’s a matter of finding the piece that fits the place I’ve made for it. I reread and circle around it and try out changes in punctuation and that sort of thing. When I revise it’s often to satisfy something about the sound of it—more often than it would be a gesture of fulfilling the content. I’m more drawn to the formal and sound elements of a poem—and sometimes in getting it to sound right, there will be a complication or opening up of the content rather than the more traditional closure of content, and I welcome that. It keeps me from thinking of the poem as a soapbox in the wilderness."

(Elizabeth Willis, interviewed by Mark Tursi - http://www.webdelsol.com/Double_Room/7/Elizabeth_Willis_Interview.pdf)