[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

All: I don't mean to depict myself as some two-faced bastard, but sometimes a poem leads me more deeply into what I really think than what comes out in a facile first draft. Try it!

Tim, and Roger too, I think we all accept that this can happen. I merely posit that, for some of us, there is principled resistance. Hearing the suggestion to do the opposite of what we want is more likely to make us retire from the fray and put the poem aside than continue with it just then. We may come back to it later, having been thus prodded. And we may not.

I don't mean to go on and on with this digression from the thread's main question. It's just a particularly sore point with me, and it's likely to remain so. I've said what I said to ask Roger to respect that not all poetic brains work the same way his does. But I've said it, so let's drop it.