When I’ve been running regularly and writing regularly, it tends to go well. When I haven’t been running or writing in a while, then I’m bent over heaving for breath and wondering why I ever thought I knew how to write a sentence.
To reduce a poem to a purely autobiographical, experiential reading feels limiting to me. To reduce a poem to an “aboutness” seems limiting to me. The poet Allen Grossman said, “A poem is about a thing the way a cat is about a house.”