Six months ago today I started Rest Note, thinking it would be the 1st of 4 books. I did all those "read-along" interpretations of it, here. Now I have the feeling it won't go any further. I wrote 3 sections of Rest Note 2 (posted here a few days ago). But I suspect it might be all done. Last of my Mandel-Cranian quatrains. Maybe.

Pondering in new directions(?). Dissatisfied with my own poetry (though - please don't misunderstand - happy enough with Rest Note, for what it is), & with poetry in general... or just tired, maybe.

The advantage of never getting very far in Poetry World : you start to think harder about what you really might like to read. Or what possibly someone else really might want to read.

The Glut problem is many-dimensional. One consequence of the illusory ease of our writing/publishing technologies now : we take poetry for granted. We lack taste and discrimination.

Making it should be like breathing at the North Pole : very difficult, very cold.

There should be many, many, many obstacles. This is what helps make its eventual appearance so precious. At least that's how it was in the old days (in my mythology, anyway).

Poetry should be the utter opposite of chit-chat.

It should be steeped in absolutely decisive affirmations and refusals. It should be aged and ripened, refined to the utmost. (I'm not talking about academic or intellectual (or even social) refinement, but rather experiential, existential, artistic refinement.)