I wrote the poems I wanted to write

You know what, I can honestly say the poems that comprise my forthcoming book, they are the poems I wanted to write.  I feel completely at peace with the book. That's big for me.  Because….

at some point during the process of preparing my first book of poems for publication, I thought to myself, "Oh, I'm so glad this book is happening. I can finally get on to the work of writing the poems I was meant to write."  I am so ashamed that I had this thought.  I realized almost as soon as I thought it that it was artificial, was pretense, was knee-jerk, was shallow, and patently counter to my real experience of writing the poems.  But I think it's a feeling we're conditioned to have, to think our "real" writing is the writing that awaits us and that our past poems are junky.  I would like us to denounce this attitude. I would like us to think back to when we were writing our poems, to value that experience—to value how it made us feel, to value the emotional truth we sought and found during it, the problems we came upon and left as problems because that's the human space of longing we occupy day to day, the words that arose from the muck to startle us into clarity one moment and complexity the next.

Here endeth my sermon.