The poems that appealed the most to me this week were Denis Johnson's Heat and Susan Mitchell's Rapture. They are both excellent poems and I wouldn't mind having my voice and style as a poet be influenced by either. I feel that they have something that I'm still trying to capture in my own work. I'm trying to find a balance between beautiful allusive language and the accessibility and immediacy I want present in my work. I find that adding the imagery and complexity that I find interesting in poems can be distancing. It has a "cooling" effect, which is counterproductive for me sometimes because what I want to call upon with that image or this reference is the passion and intensity associated with it. It's lost somehow, between how I think of it and how I manage to present it in the work.
By the same token, I don't want to write things that are trite or banal or overly sentimental. I find that difficult, because the things we all like to talk about and write about and read about have been exhausted. It's hard to find something new to say, and once you do find something, make sure that doesn't sound like it came from a high school diary. Hoagland's advice in his essay "On Disproportion" in Real Sofistikashun is a little confusing. It just seems to go on about the value of letting the heart off the leash so to speak, but not really a practical way to keep them in balance. The poets examined already have a grasp on these forces to a certain extent and can play with them. I don't know how to do that yet consistently - I usually just end up sounding vague. Ah well.
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