Words for poets have meanings, appropriate uses, associations, connotations, etymologies, histories of use and misuse. They conjure up images, feelings, shadowy depths and glinting surfaces. Their properties are marvellous, endless, not to be guessed at from casual inspection. And each property - meaning, association, weight, colour, duration, shape, texture, etc. Out of these properties the poetry is built, even if the end cannot be entirely foreseen but grows out of the very process of deployment, that continual, two-way dialogue between writer and poem.
Poems start in odd phrases, an image, a tune in the head, a deeply incoherent pain.
How these develop is the poetry. It's in responding to what has been written, feeling it, understanding it, extending its possibilities with imagination, honesty and sensitivity. But that means very fine discriminations. Verbal originality, wide sympathies, generosity of heart and a compassion for the human condition are essential for poetry, but they are nothing without extended toil. Poetry trains the character needed to be an artist, the infinite capacity to be honest and take pains.