[Rhina P. Espaillat]

Well, but EVERY poem faces "an initial suspicion which the poem must be good enough to overcome." It costs work and time to read, and the reader is "suspicious" to the extent that he wants to be compensated for both. H ewants your poem to give him enough--pleasure, to begin with, and then something more lasting, another kind of pleasure--to make his reading worth the trouble.

But it's not "purity" he's looking for. If the poem you;ve composed as a response to X painting or piece of music gives him that pleasure--both kinds--then it works for him, and he probably says, along with Nyctom (and with me, too!)
Let's hear it for the impure!

The point is, I think, that the X that triggers the poem is a hook on which the poet hangs it, like a person or an event or a remark overheard. It doesn't matter where the poet finds his hooks, it's what he hangs on them that's important.