Write The Poem Only You

Until Recently, I Thought 'occasional Poetry' Meant That You Wrote Only Occasionally.

When You Get A Poem [in A Public Place], It Happens To You So Suddenly That You Don't Have Time To Deploy Your Anti-poetry Deflector Shields That Were Installed In High School.

I'm Speaking To Someone I'm Trying To Get To Fall In Love With Me. I'm Trying To Speak Intimately To One Person. That Should Be Clear. I'm Not Speaking To An Audience. I'm Not Writing For The Podium. I'm Just Writing, Trying To Write In A Fairly Quiet Tone To One Other Reader Who Is By Herself, Or Himself, And I'm Trying To Interrupt Some Silence In Their Life, Which Is Utterance.

You Come By Your Style By Learning What To Leave Out. At First You Tend To Overwrite—embellishment Instead Of Insight. You Either Continue To Write Puerile Bilge, Or You Change. In The Process Of Simplifying Oneself, One Often Discovers The Thing Called Voice.

I Felt At Some Point That I Had Nothing To Lose, And [laughs] Maybe I Was Wrong. I Think, You Know, There's Always These Little Autobiographical Secrets Behind Things. I Think I Was Really Attacking My Earlier Self, And This Kind Of Pretentious Figure.