[John Isbell]

Hi folks,

We were talking in a comment thread about our feelings toward our own poems. I said mine often give me a kind of incredulous happiness: I can't believe the words, the lines, the stanzas, came from me. Partly I think this reflects coming to poetry late. That incredulity is a key part of my pleasure in reading over what I've written, and I think makes me enjoy my own work more than almost anyone else's. It's a harder feeling to get with other people's work, I think, since that sits on the page already fashioned, but I get it quite often, here and there, on the Sphere, and then in reading say Yeats, or Heaney, or Dante, or Shakespeare. How is that moment humanly possible, I think. It seems like a divine afflatus.
So I can't take credit for this thread idea, it's not mine. I think I can say that Mark McDonnell suggested it, though of course the above reaction is purely mine. I'd be interested in others' thoughts and feelings.

Cheers,
John

Oh, of course sometimes for me, my poetry seems clumsy and pedestrian. But the feeling of amazement keeps me going, and I think can complicate revision. It makes others' eyes key.