I used to stand on the corner in San Diego with poems sticking out of my hip pocket, asking people if there was a place where I could read poems. The audience is half of the poem.
Poem
The poem ‘What Teachers Make’ is not without its detractors. This one person wrote to me and said: ‘Gee, Mr. Mali. You don’t possibly have a teacher-God complex, do you?’ And that was the first time I’d ever heard of that expression. So, yeah, I’m sure I have a teacher-God complex.
Working alone on a poem, a poet is of all artists the most free. The poem can be written with a modicum of technology, and can be published, in most cases, quite cheaply.
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Many performance poets seem to believe that yelling a poem makes it comprehensible. They are wrong.
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain.
I try to write very fast. I don’t revise very much. I write the poem in one sitting. Just let it rip. It’s usually over in twenty to forty minutes. I’ll go back and tinker with a word or two, change a line for some metrical reason weeks later, but I try to get the whole thing just done.
Often people, when they’re confronted with a poem, it’s like someone who keep saying ‘what is the meaning of this? What is the meaning of this?’ And that dulls us to the other pleasures poetry offers.
I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn’t betray things that are true to me as a poet.