Hi. nice to see you. This is an issue near and dear to me, like a deer I shot. But I've never shot a deer. And this is why you should never trust a poet, or rather, you should not believe a poem's content is coterminous with the poet's life experience. I am not writing an autobiography in my poems. If I could even decide what I was trying to do with/in a poem, I would be happy. I try not to think while I'm writing or afterward. Or at all, except maybe when revising. More articulate poets--Lynn Melnick/Cate Marvin/Amy King--than I have discussed this. See here and here and here . Some excerpts out of context, but piquing nonetheless: After a poetry reading I gave a couple of months ago, a stranger came up to a male poet I read with and asked him how he landed upon his chosen form for the lyric, “I”-based poems in his book. The same stranger then turned to me and asked, ostensibly in earnest, if I was “okay now.” My poems had him “worried.” I will ge...
Like the title says.