Both the creative process and the revision process fascinate me.
Rereading - which starts at once - a fair share of my words or lines seem to me to come from outside me, hence my surprise at them: a thing I love, more I think than anything else, in poems by others. But as for what you, Roger, call "the critical perspective that gives me no benefit of the doubt for being me", I wish I had more of that! A lot of my own rereading is just removing obviously clumsy moments - feminine endings, one-syllable enjambments. Sometimes I'll revise for sense. I endlessly revise looking for such ugliness, but there's no substitute for good eyes on someone else, hence my love for the Eratosphere, both comment threads like this and crits.
I've published, but almost exclusively critical work. Publishing changes how my stuff looks to me, and helps me to let go.
Cheers,
John
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