dwindling supplies

A poet who could legitimately fear running out of words.

not again

Except in a poem’s refrain, poets should fear repeating themselves.

waist deep and weilding

The intrepid poet wades into language without fear.

easy writer

Writers don’t fear their facility even though it’s that talent which most threatens their true work.

up to the chin

The poet wades into words unafraid of what the depths hold.

fear factor

Every once and a while a poem should scare you. Either because of its subject or because you don’t even recognize the aesthetic.

break in the action

The longer you’ve written poems, the less you fear those periods when nothing is forthcoming.

poem is maw

People fear poetry because it engulfs all other forms of language. Poetry is the ever voracious text.

stop sign

In order not to fear the period, the writer must think of it as a way station or jumping off place.

fear of falling

With white knuckles the letters of the poem clung to the page, fearing they’d be knocked off the anthology page at any moment.

sharp rebound

Complex and subtle interests, which the mind spins for itself may occupy art and poetry or our own spirits for a time; but sooner or later they come back with a sharp rebound to the simple elementary passions—anger, desire, regret, pity, and fear; and what corresponds to them in the sensuous world—bare, abstract, fire, water, air, tears, sleep, silence, and what De Quincey has called the ‘glory of motion’. [99]

—Walter Pater, “Aesthetic Poetry,” Essays on Literature and Art (J.M Dent & Sons, 1973)

utter limits

Wholly unafraid of writing about anything.

face value

Of course the facile are afraid of the self.