One of the things that I should probably point out is that poetry is not, how shall we put it, like an undergraduate essay. Poetry relies on sonics -- the sound of the words, the lines, and especially (with the type of poetry I write) the syntax.

T.S. Eliot once said that it is the duty of every editor to rescue the work from its author. I don't think he meant impose a reading on the work; on the contrary his vision of the editorial process was to let the book be the book, to let the work say what it can say and say it as well as it can be said. In the process, both the editor and the writer discover new things. That sense of discovery is like

My wife put it bluntly: no one can read your handwriting. I can't read your handwriting. Mystery is the key to love and love comes from the soul, but then my daughter added, "Why puzzle the reader? I can't read it either."