[Julie Steiner]

A few folks seemed eager to discuss this, so I've started the thread.

Is poetry rooted in the poet's personal experience more likely to be tiresome? Or does it depend on the ability of the first-person narrator to spin a yarn, rather than a yawn?

Personally, I get sick of reading my own dismal stuff, which is usually on the same damn themes and in the same damn tone. Which is the main reason I don't have a book yet. Every time I try to put a bunch of my stuff together I get too bored to fini

But I find others' revelations—some intentional, some not—fascinating, if the language is fresh, and if the point of view is not exactly what I'd expected. (That was the problem with some of the early COVID anthologies. The viewpoint of well-educated, financially comfortable white retirees was ridiculously well-represented, even more so than in a typical poetry magazine.)