John Gallaher writes to say that he hopes my criticism of his reading in St. Louis is mistaken. I had said that his poetry left me cold, that I wanted it to engage me in a way it didn't. I probably shouldn't criticize anyone who is actually alive on this blog, because I end up feeling like an opinionated jerk. I told him that that is essentially what I am.

I was thinking just this morning: how can the author know how good his, her own work is? It is clear that the great ones either "know" they are good or are tormented by extreme self-doubt--or both. Part of knowing you are good is that self-confidence needed to produce the work in the first place. You might know you are good even before you have actually produced anything to justify that feeling, yet the feeling is still justified despite it all. The other part of knowing you are good is the development of a critical sense to such a point that one can read one's own work and judge its exact merits. But even this might not be enough to silence the inner critic. Clearly poets are sensitive to criticism for this exact reason: the combination of critical acumen and self-doubt, combined with lack of lavish praise on a daily basis, is a lethal combination. Your own critical acumen makes you doubt positive criticism, which your sense of yourself as a creator craves.

My current series of Spanish poems translated into English is brilliant, I feel. I know these poems are more successful than others I have written (critical acumen). I am also reasonably confident of the direction I am taking. Yet I can easily see that these poems might seem inconsequential, incomprehensible, or simply incompetent to another reader. The judgment I make about my own work is metaphysically different than the judgment I might make about someone else's, even if I have a highly developed critical sense.