Occurred to me last night while washing dishes that oftentimes I just try too hard with poetry. I push it, I push myself, when it's one of those things you can't push - it's too close, it's near, it's in your backyard or the palm of your hand... just stop striving in certain ways (or strive in a different way).

The overcompensations of seeming-failure, the inability to recognize what I really want to do. Familiar dilemma. (People who've been "following" on the web have probably known this about me for a long time!)

I want to enter a new phase. I had my NY School Era (60s-early 70s), my Jesus Freak Era (late 70s), my Mandelstam Apprenticeship (early 80s), my Formalist Period (early 90s), my Long Poem Era (mid-80s to recent times...), my Self-Publishing Era (seems like forever), my Internet-Wallowing Era (late-90s to present)... Now I want to enter a Short-Poems-In-Print Era.

Since I have the habit of getting whatever I want, this might actually happen... if I can manage to write a few poems...

Re-reading some essays in WH Auden's The Dyer's Hand.