Poetry is naked. It can't really appeal to anything outside itself for justification, wears no protective clothing, carries no baggage. Can appeal to no objective criterion outside of itself. I hate alibis for poetry, appeals to "subject matter." Anything that displaces the hard burning flame. "Poetics" is an alibi. This is my poetics, to have no alibi, no excuses. Like people who play Mozart for their babies to make them smarter. Isn't that an insult to Mozart and to babies? Such people should be strangled by Kenneth Koch's strangler (only symbolically of course!). The avant-garde is not a "school" of poetry, but a recognition that nobody has the answers, that there are no recipes except those that must be "unlearned" time and again. There is not even special equipment needed. A child's composition notebook and a #2 pencil are sufficient. Creeley notes this when he says that he was fascinated by his father's doctor's bag: the notion of "packing light." Like when I was 9 years old and went out into the street to play wearing only a pair of cut-off shorts.