T.S. Eliot wrote: “If you complain that a poet is obscure, and apparently ignoring you, the reader, or that he is speaking only to a limited circle of initiates from which you are excluded – remember that what he may have been trying to do was to put something into words which could not be said in any other way, and therefore in a language which may be worth the trouble of learning.”

The rhythm of a writer’s HUMAN VOICE is the most important thing.

The more original the rhythm, the more groundbreaking the voice.

There is always more ground to break, because the world is never the same. (This is what is meant by “process.”)

AI tells me that there are not more than 2,000 to 10,000 people alive on Planet Earth at any given moment who can truly begin to comprehend the most cutting-edge English-language creative writing and poetry, when it first comes out (as of 2026 AD). For this, I completely agree (because I know, in my gut, that it’s a fact) with AI. (It is a small city that can be called the eternal city.)

The truly newest new human writing challenges, very directly and at the same exact time not so directly at all, the way that almost everyone else on the Planet is thinking at that exact moment.

What is really rule-breaking and breaking-new-ground writing looks like mistakes and slippages and even “bad writing” to almost everyone else because this has never been seen before, by anyone, anywhere, ever. (They will be offended and they won’t know why.)

New writing has, by definition, NO ready-made audience for it. If it did, it would be anything but truly new writing.

It needs to create its own audience, one new reader at a time.

This has always been true, from Paul’s letters unto now.

Paul’s letters speak directly to his readers and it sounds like he KNEW HIS READERS PERSONALLY (including many women, which was his first radical breakthrough) even though he did not know all of them personally. He was writing to dozens, or at the very most, a few hundreds (like 200 or 300), of readers, and often, far less.

The greatest writing displays a process; and quotation = allusion or it isn’t worth anything, especially now but not especially.

“The LORD is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” – David

“I am the Good Shepherd.” – Jesus

END NOTE: The above appears as the introduction to a lengthy series of poems collectively entitled “micropoems” selections of which shall be appearing here this week. Thanks for your attention – or inattention, as the case may be.

END NOTE 2: Sentimentality is a cheap trick, if trick means paying a hooker.

Almost all human writing is sentimental.

(0.003% manages to rise above, barely.)

Dale the Drifter (Images by The Drifter)