Fontegaia, the poem, is winding down... I'm in the last chapter (#5); the grand finale was actually in #4; thinking of Whitman's slow leavetaking in Leaves. Who knows, maybe there'll be a final bit of fireworks.

I'm already thinking of what to do next. This poem, as I've noted before, feels like the coda or caboose to the very long quatrain-train that began with Stubborn Grew, over 10 yrs ago. Taking a deep breath, trying to see how to proceed.

Hope to find ways of writing in a more direct & clear way. Going back to shorter poems, maybe. Try to break into a more public conversation. I've been writing for a long time, changed many times, tried many things already... maybe I'm just getting started. We'll see.

As far as style goes... I don't believe in programmatic method & technique, I think the artistic revolutions & programs are over-rated... often they simply amount to poets without either style or subject-matter trying to create a program ex nihilo... trying too hard. There are group styles & period styles... but they seem to happen spontaneously, a sort of coalescence of mutual interest, friendship & shared enthusiasms.

In my view, poetry itself is a kind of living ongoing organic entity or phenomenon. Just because you can write doesn't mean you can write poetry; it doesn't start from scratch, from nowhere, as if discourse & language were a-historical.

Of course, the aim to fold as much not-poetry as possible into poetry is a basic project...

Literary style per se (grammar, rhetoric); subject-matter, topoi, the ancient occasions for certain kinds of poems; the personality and existential situation (the particular historical or social dilemmas) of the poet; literary models & mentors.... all these things coalesce for the poet who has discovered a way into that living entity or gestalt. Thus it's an extremely complex interaction, a personal & individual encounter between a singular talent and a very subtle game (or calling). This doesn't mean the poems themselves have to be turgidly difficult - far from it.