Sublimate!

I have a hunch that many people who sit down to write a poem reflexively think: "Now I shall tumble headlong into the blackest abysses. I must be miserable and word-hector my reader until she tears her hair out and leaps off a pier. All the world must know of my misery or my anger. About who or what done me wrong."

But maybe, at least once or twice, that tendency to dark expression could be turned on its head. In other words, adopt an ironic stance toward one's own dismal psychopathy. Alter that compulsion to say the bleakest, direst things into a different written energy, an unexpected artistic registration. That way, the nightmare and the mental illness might gain some dignity and distance. They can aloofly whistle and sheepishly grin in the background on stools of sublimation. Look out, not in.


I don't know anything, but I'm 60 now. I've reached the age of ostensible insight and confident babbling.