Nobody Knows Poetry Better Than You

Don’t let anyone tell you what to write or not to write, or how to write it, unless it is what you need to make your writing more what you want it to be. Poetry is good flawed and raw as well as polished and cooked. Let your angels and demons play and write down the conversation. The more you edit the more you remove it from the energy that gave it life. There is a balance between accessibility and integrity. You want people to relate to your writing, but you don’t want to skin it, stuff it, and mount it to get there. Shared language should be a living process and life has messy aspects that help us connect with each other. Even the most sophisticated people have messy lives where they are overwhelmed by ordinary processes. Poetry is often the only place where people let their fundamental humanity show. This should be a bit rough, if you smooth all the edges their is nothing for others to grab onto as they try to hold it close. You may gain admiration for a smoothly turned and burnished piece of writing, but it may end up being a inert insulated object, sterilized, rather than living food of inspiration that expands in combination as it interacts with the life of other human beings in ways you will never know.