I've been working on a couple of different "poetic statements" for the past few weeks, a form I'm not very familiar with. I seem to be going through some kind of academic backlash phase where I don't want to write about theory at all. I'm trying to make really honest statements about what I think about poetry without reference to academic jargon, and I'm finding it fairly difficult. Sometimes I think I've written interesting and complex observations, other times I think I'm just stating the obvious. The worst is when my attempts to state things honestly devolve into confessional, emotive psychobabbling. It's really disturbing how closely my concept of my poetics is linked to my concept of self. I'm not sure if that's a strength, in terms of writing, or if it's simply an inability to transcend the familiarity of the lyric. I think it's useful to put some effort into examining all this, why I write, what I expect from writing, etc. But there is an element of avoidance in it: I haven't actually written any poetry in quite some time. Oh well, stringing words together in some fashion is never really a waste of time, right?