Part of the writing life is putting up with yourself when you should be writing but can’t. Tonight I read a little Jean Follain, a little Martyn Crucefix (Hurt). I thought a lot about the importance of relevant details– the contingent world– to any poem that manages to break the silence. The principle of relevance is the killer, otherwise you just have piles of this and that. Jean Follain was a master of discreet details: his poems so arrange them that to read his poem is to climb a little hill only to suddenly look out over a burning city or a hidden garden.
Metaxyturn Diaries 