HAH. I have in fact just been reading some volumes of Mary Oliver - I just joined the local poetry library, which because I am in London is the National Arts Council dedicated poetry library (which, incidentally, contains a book entitled The Poet's Way) - and also struggling with one poem in particular that wasn't quite sure how to happen, and hence have been thinking a lot about how I am beginning to trust, gradually, that it's okay for me to try to write a poem and have it not work out. (I talked a little about this in my own journal, and want to talk about it more.)

There's a thread I keep coming back to in songs I adore - Ani DiFranco's urgent napkin poems, Frank Turner's guitars & drums & desperate poetry: the idea that poetry is other, that it pours through one; I have the nagging sense that the poetry I write this way is better than the poetry I work at.

So I'm going to keep working at it. As I said, I'm beginning to trust that it's okay to try something and find that it doesn't quite taste the way I want it to; and I'm intending to take this into praxis.