I wish I could say that I pay attention to every syllable of every word contained in every line composing each stanza, that I *know what I’m doing* at all times and in every way while writing, that I exercised complete and utter control over the process of writing even as I enact it.
But I don’t.
For me, writing is a largely automatic occurrence that requires complete dissociation from everythg: my surroundings, inhibitions, and even myself. I disconnect as absolutely as I am able. I have to listen to music in order to write—it forces the overactive parts of my brain to pay attention to the sound that’s occurring until it gets to the point where I’m completely shutting the music out. I’m still listening to whatever’s playing, but not consciously—and then the writing begins.
I’ve had a good bit of traditional, formal training in poetry, but most of what I apply to my writing comes through subconsciously. It’s kind of like spelling—I know what words are supposed to *look like*, and if they’re misspelled I recognize the word as wrong rather than directly catching the error. My sensitivity to language and tone function in this way—the more time I spend on a piece, the more attentive I am to the flow of the language and its other aspects…but it’s more that certain lines or words simply don’t sit right, don’t *feel perfect*, than it is that they’re *wrong*.
Line breaks concern me the most. The two words that draw the most attention in any line are the first and the last. What comes between them is definitely important, but those two positions are certainly more prominent—so those words have to be chosen with incredible caution. Additionally, I try to make each line read as an aphorism—as if the poem is (at its root) a string of disconnected images or statements, one image per line, that occurs through time in exactly the same way that a piece of music does.
I’m not a huge fan of punctuation, although I do use it when poetically necessary (in order to force a stop or a pause and make certain lines scan correctly). I’m too concerned with flow to willingly allow caesurae or interruptions. Like everything else in language, punctuation can be an incredible poetic tool—but it’s not a tool that I am comfortable applying.
I learned a great deal about my writing and writing in general when I stopped using pronouns almost completely in my poetry. I began that as an exercise a few years ago, and I can’t escape it now—it completely retards and prevents the tone of my poems from becoming fully conversational, and forces the piece to remain completely ungrounded—there is no subject-object relationship at work, which I think makes my pieces difficult to approach, since there is no comfortable point of entry or approach.
I believe very stongly in the conception of my work as existing completely outside of myself and within its own context. Although my style and certain themes become apparent over the course of multiple pieces, each piece is intended to be able to stand completely isolated from the rest of what I have written and should not require any information that it does not already contain—and this includes biographical details. There may be lines that bear some connection to something in my life—but *all* the lines in *every* piece that I write are intended only to bear reference to themselves and the other lines in that piece.
Finally (this is much longer than I thought it would be!), the last part of writing for me is titling the piece. Titles serve multiple functions—in my thought, they are both the initial words of the poem (sort of standing as part of the first line, if not comprising the actual first line of the piece) as well as a key or indicator of the intent of the piece. They are not the answer. There is no meaning inherent in the piece itself—the purpose of my words is to *cause a reaction*, to *have an effect*...*not* to get a point across. Poetry is an art, not a medium for communication, and a piece means whatever a reader sees it as meaning.
There is no such thing as misinterpretation./B] 
Well, that’s it. Thanks for reading
spinkle
