John Barton

The community of poets I belong to is not as close as it used to be, if only for the fact that our lives have become busier: jobs, children, and the like. ↗

— John Barton

#belong #busier #children #close #community

The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight. ↗

— John Barton

#combined #draft #elements #experiment #first

The poet must decide not to impose his feelings in order to write without sentimentality. ↗

— John Barton

#feelings #his #impose #must #order

The point of an experiment is not to arrive at a predetermined end point, to prove or disprove anything, but to deliver a poem that reveals much about the process taken. ↗

— John Barton

#anything #arrive #deliver #disprove #end

The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions. ↗

— John Barton

#conclusions #draw #experiment #own #poem

To me many short poems read and write like beginnings that simply whet my appetite; I want to get over that. ↗

— John Barton

#beginnings #get #i #like #many

Who is the ideal reader? God only knows. ↗

— John Barton

#ideal #knows #only #reader #who

Writing can sometimes be exploitative. I like to take a few steps of remove in order to respect the privacy of the subject. If readers make the link, they have engaged with the poem. ↗

— John Barton

#exploitative #few #i #like #link

You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it. ↗

— John Barton

#book #different #each #into #never