No wonder poetry is so tense. It never gets sleep. Can’t roll over for fear of squashing its dreams. Turn right it steps on its own toes. Turn in circles to avoid the Academy. Ah, the snowy path. Ah, the tidy couplet. Oh, the project, the project! If you can’t describe it, you ain’t a poet.

“I would argue that a poet who has a project that he can lucidly discuss is a pretty boring poet, at best. I would argue that a poet with a project might not be a poet at all. Or at least a baby poet, not a great one…. I would argue that a poet who says he has a project probably has no sense of the idea of habitus and its intersection with the act of creation. Yeah. I think the term “project” has nothing to do with poetry.”

I send you back to the combined source for this. Ms. Place on Fitterman via Lasky over at Constant Critic.