--- poet Billy Collins, quoted in a Poetry Foundation profile, itself quoting a 1999 New York Times article by Bruce Weber.
As quoted on the Poetry Foundation site:
"I have one reader in mind, someone who is in the room with me, and who I'm talking to, and I want to make sure I don't talk too fast, or too glibly. Usually I try to create a hospitable tone at the beginning of a poem. Stepping from the title to the first lines is like stepping into a canoe. A lot of things can go wrong."
