Bill, you have written a number of poems which I remember very well. I also remember some of them coming back in new revisions. Let me say right now that I have always recognized a lot of very fine writing in your poems.
I used to think I was writing the same poem over and over again, i.e. the "subject material". I finally figured out that this was not a bad thing, just as a visual artist can return again and again to a subject in endless varitions, so can a poet.
This is what I would like to see you do. Keep the poem but move to another poem with the same subject. I remember the poem about raking leaves, the father bleeding (is that the library poem?), another that I liked a lot is the one about the room, the table, the walls, the window. Excuse me if I am not explaining them well, but you will know the ones I mean. If I think hard, I can come up with other poems by you I have seen here. I have always been sorry that you appear so sporadically and I am glad to see you posting again.
To thine own self be true--keep the poem and move the subject to the next framework. You have done some fine work which disappears in the next revision.
Does that make sense?
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