"Your poems are too personal," he says.
"Remove the you; the I. What is left? That's your poem."
Imagine this poem
without you, without I.
Maybe it exists in
the vacuum of space.
Maybe there are no words at all.
Maybe this is not a poem,
but a stone. Imagine it a brick,
a massive quarried brick,
heavy with the wisdom of
the ancients who placed it
perfect atop a step pyramid.
Climb up. Stand on it. Get comfortable. Now look up.
Overhead, the sky is expansive and blue.
Overhead, the yellow sun shines.
Time travel. Look up again.
The same sun. The same sky.
The same brick.
"It's still kind of personal," he says.
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Comments: 20
My grandfather used to say, "Opinions are like assholes: Everybody has one and they all stink." Bottom line regarding critics is that they're critics because they can't do anything else but criticize. (I hate speaking in generalities.) Some criticism is useful, but most is about as valuable as the stuff flushed down the john.
I wasn't sure if it was too 'meta' when I wrote it, but now I'm really feeling more confident about it.