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Unread 05-16-2018, 05:53 AM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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Location: a foothill of the Catskills
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Yes, to quote Randall Jarrell's wonderful metaphor:

A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.

I think it comes down to a question of the severity of the internal censor. Eliot’s and perhaps Szymborska's were stern; Auden’s and Dickinson’s, not so much. But this is to hijack Jayne’s thread. It’s an interesting question and also involves asking whether the poet is the best judge of his or her work. We might have an interesting thread on it!
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