I am leery of 1st person poems. well, I acknowledge that I frequently use 1st person plural. by design, too. but I think I heard too many poems this weekend that were more like personal weather reports. stuck in the flat territory of how 'I' feel. O'Hara succeeded in that because his tone was so subtle and varied. his 'I' was very social and encompassing, rather than invested. my use of 'we' is something of a version of Personism. I just thought of that, maybe I'm hooting. I see the LANGUAGE revolt to be partly a way of dealing (getting rid of) that weighty 'I'. tactics of restraint. if the point becomes that your foot aches, mom died or your baby done left you, the poem will be whiny. accepting these issues into the poem differs from adverting them. the poem aint about you, it's about the language around you. insofar as poems are about. I didn't like Aaron's heartfelt poem with the repeated the phrase 'breaks my heart' because it was trying to put something across. I don't doubt his sincerity, but his broken heart was a matter of moments, a literary device. we all do this, but we should be wary. Aaron is making the language say something, which is not how poems work. I mean, poems have their own life. of course I want to write anti-war poems as well, but I'm trying to step back from that and let the poem make its own way.