I See Woefully Obscure Poetry As Simply

There's This Pet Phrase About Writing That Is Bandied Around Particularly In Workshops About "finding Your Own Voice As A Poet", Which I Suppose Means That You Come Out From Under The Direct Influence Of Other Poets And Have Perhaps Found A Way To Combine Those Influences So That It Appears To Be Your Own Voice.

By Clarity I Don't Mean That We're Always In Kind Of A Simple Area Where Everything Is Clear And Comforting And Understood. Clarity Is Certainly A Way Toward Disorientation Because If You Don't Start Out - If The Reader Isn't Grounded, If The Reader Is Disoriented In The Beginning Of The Poem, Then The Reader Can't Be Led Astray Or Disoriented Later.

There Are Interesting Forms Of Difficulty, And There Are Unprofitable Forms Of Difficulty. I Mean, I Enjoy Some Difficult Poetry, But Some Of It Is Impenetrable And I Actually Wouldn't Want To Penetrate It If I Could, Perhaps.

Part Of Writing Is Discovering The Rules Of The Game And Then Deciding Whether To Follow The Rules Or To Break Them. The Great Thing About The Game Of Poetry Is That It's Always Your Turn - I Guess That Goes Back To My Being An Only Child. So Once It's Under Way, There Is A Sense Of Flow.

As Soon As I Start To Write I'm Very Aware, I'm Trying To Be Aware That A Reader Just Might Well Pick Up This Poem, A Stranger. So When I'm Writing - And I Think That This Is Important For All Writers - I'm Trying To Be A Writer And A Reader Back And Forth. I Write Two Lines Or Three Lines. I Will Immediately Stop And Turn Into A Reader Instead Of A Writer, And I'll Read Those Lines As If I Had Never Seen Them Before And As If I Had Never Written Them.