Writing Problems: Readers as Imagined Others

Dickinson, Winnicott, Eco, Clifton, Herbert, Grossman

One of the un-untieable knots in poetry is the permission a poet has to give to allow their most inward expressions to become public. A corollary to writing is that a poem needs readers. Even Emily Dickinson, who made 1,775 poems in her adult life, only published about 10 of them. The remaining 1,765 had the potential for readers, but during her life, s…