declaration not an answer

A manifesto arises, it is not solicited.

[A manifesto lives on impulse. It is not as slow to develop as a project.]

in the thick of things

Often in the presence of other art, or one might say under the pressure of other art, poetry arises.

step into the same poem twice

Once a poem has appeared in print, I leave it alone. I can count on the fingers of one hand the published poems I have altered in any substantial way for subsequent reprintings. A poem seems to me to have an integrity born of its moment of creation that should be respected. The “later me” who might want to word things differently is no longer the same person who wrote that poem; I don’t entirely trust her impulse to meddle with it. Let her write her own poems.

I took me some years for me to realize that not all poets operate this way: that for some, the text of the poem is something considerably more fluid and mutable, even after it has appeared in print. One fellow poet recently quoted to me what she says was the watchword at a graduate writing program she attended in the United States: “It’s all a draft until you die.”

—Robyn Sarah, “Abandonment and After,” Little Eurekas: A Decade’s Thoughts on Poetry (Biblioasis, 2007)

create trap

The notion that you must make things which you have no real impulse to realize.

grudge match

Craft vs. Grit.

poet of a certain age

He no longer made an effort to complete poems that were without an emotional impulse behind them.

back and forth

The poem as the site of reciprocity between the impulse of emotion and the shaping force of language.

deep divide

The deepest divide in poetry is between the authentic impulse and the crafted artifice.