It’s like a visual artist coming to recognize that one need not finish the drawing to get the value of the drawing, whatever it has to offer. So that one focuses instead not on the finished-ness of whatever, but on the value, on what one is after. I find this a very useful view. or at least it correlates with what I have seen in my work. a long, long gestattion period in which I tied to finish something, and the work is largely poor and laboured, till finally I came to see the use of the process and project. the value was not so much in 'great poems', but in poems by which I learned something, about poems, about me, about something. that's why the 3-5 poems contributed to mags doesn't work for me, that context doesn't underline my process, the reason I proceed. I can enjoy those 3-5 poems that others contribute, but feel bereft of context, so that the work often seems just so many pretty things. this isn't a disparagement of mags, just explaining my sensibility.