Knowledgeman

From the The Anthologist :

And then a man of forty or so, with a French accent, asked, “How do you achieve the presence of mind to initiate the writing of a poem?” And then something cracked open in me, and I finally stopped hoarding and told them my most useful secret.  The only secret that has helped me consistently over all of the years that I’ve written. I said, “Well, I’ll tell you how. I ask a simple question. I ask myself: What was the very best moment of your day?” The wonder of it was, I told them, that this one question could lift out from my life exactly what I will want to write a poem about.