Living in the poetry-writing zone feels like running a fever, or maybe being drunk but not quite sick. I want to say it's almost like the before-and-after of a migraine, but that doesn't capture the recklessness. It feels dangerous, and stupid, and euphoric, and almost transcendent, though the stupid takes the edge off the transcendence, perhaps because words are such clunky tools. I lurch among them, feeling around for the one I need, except that I have double vision and I keep bumping into doors and tripping over coffee tables and dropping loaded paintbrushes behind the couch. All the while I'm convinced I'm groping for the key that unlocks some treasure, something exact and magnificent . . . which on the next hung-over morning looks, as often as not, like shit . . . though once in a while, once in a very great while, it doesn't look like shit at all.