Interviewer: I like your poetry. This'll show my ignorance, but why do you write poetry? To communicate, or do you write it for yourself?
Stafford: I write it for myself mostly. I felt brave when I said that. And you notice I said mostly. Now I want to wiggle a little bit. The main feeling I have when I'm writing is that I'm seeking the satisfactions that are in the arrivals at the moment in language for me.
There are little emergent discoveries, opportunities while I write. And those are so satisfying that that's what I do. It's not the money. There could be money maybe, but that can't be the primary thing for the kind of writing I'm talking about. Because its direction and effectiveness depend on your total commitment to letting the experience of now take you to where the main tides of your life and the opportunities of language will take you
— William Stafford, Crossing Unmarked Snow