David McAleavey’s ‘Detailed & calm’
from ‘Talk Music‘
first, you can’t try too hard. The balance you need will be there for you to fall on if you need it, but the better balance consists in doing so well you won’t need it, in speaking or writing so firmly and freely that you’re not
trying too hard. There are lots of incredible pleasures for you, the writer, pleasures which probably no reader will ever dare even suppose he could discover in your
poem. because you have to try to write the whole poem out
as if it were one thought which came at one time, were one finite vein of gold you alone had the technique to find
& dig, naturally your reader won’t know whether you took three minutes or thirty days for the poem, and thus won’t
know the one best thrill, the thrill attendant on writing
in its turn a final line needing no revision, detailed & calm.