I think, perhaps, what I need is a stable of poet and non-poet readers who don’t know my life history so they can’t use that as a cheat sheet. I want the poems seen by someone in isolation of building it into a personality or image of a whole person. I want it looked at dispassionately. I want to know if poems stand on their own.
For these purposes, I don’t need people to talk to me about syntax or effectiveness of poem, not good or bad, or liked or dislikes, or interesting or not, just does the plot or content get thru. Just paraphrase or reparse or just jist. Repeat back to me the predominant mood or message.
Eventually I’ll be able to see that with any given piece, when I become a foreigner to my own words again, but I want the cycle faster.
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