Hi, Yves.
I'm not wistful for more obviously autobiographical content, but for a more obvious sense in your thread responses that you take your own poems seriously. If you don't, why should anyone else?
It's none of my business whether any poem is informed by the poet's firsthand, lived experience. (I once told a poet that I liked her poem about a bike accident, and she mentioned that she had made the whole thing up, which didn't change in the slightest how I felt about that poem's ability to testify to the truth.)
But I do care very much if we are being asked to spend time critiquing a poem that is regarded by its author mainly as iambic pentameter practice — or some sort of casual experiment with this or that effect — rather than as a real, full-fledged poem.
I hope I'm mistaken in taking your frequent statements of humility about your work as evidence that it doesn't mean much to you.
I'm not a fan of confessional poetry, despite the fact that much of my own work having been interpreted as such. I mentioned confession here only because your narrator is confessing to a sexual obsession with (literal or figurative) ghosts, and later to having lied about the violent nature of that obsession.
After the poem's mention of the Internet, I did briefly wonder if the ghosts at the window might actually be a reference to online porn, which has obvious relevance to a lot of people. But I decided it couldn't be, because the narrator had also blamed his ghost problem on a very specific cause — namely, a witch he had cut off in traffic within the past week. Since porn obsessions tend to be of longer standing than that, I decided that a more literal interpretation was more likely, and that things in the poem should be taken at face value.
Frankly, I don't think the presence of the witch is doing the poem any favors in any version of the poem. The less of that red herring, the better for literalists like me.
I do like the title "Temptation," which seems to have disappeared after Version 1.10. I hope it's still there.
I either missed your Elvis sonnet, or I'm forgetful in the wee hours of the morning. Would you mind sending it to me via PM, Yves?
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