'You are William Blake! Wow. I'm impressed. Not only are you a self-made artist and poet, but you've suddenly become a very trendy guy to like. It's not that we doubt that you have all your marbles, it's just that we're not quite sure what you did with them to come up with those terrifying theological visions. The people of your time were nowhere near as forgiving as that, and all your neighbors thought you were a grade-A nut job. But we love you, so rest happy.'
Which Major Romantic Poet Would You Be (if You Were a Major Romantic Poet)?
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appetite

she was never so hungry
as to eat the pages of books

Does it matter that I don't quite know what this poem means?

My poetry manuscript—it all feels rather complicated to me. When I publish a poem, that is more straightforward. Poem on paper, poem on screen... yes, that's cool. That works. It makes sense.

But all together. In a book. That's something else.

Each poem is a piece, an element. All forty poems, however, are part of a whole narrative.

The poems are tubes of paint, where the book is the canvas. To me, they are incomplete, amputated, unless they are all together. They form part of a story, and unless you read them in the one place, you only hear a whispered fragment of it.

This is important to me. The book. Yes, I want recognition, yes, I want validation. It is this desire I have mentioned before. But there is more to it. The painting might not make sense if you only see the brushes, the sketches, the rough drafts, the slop of paint in the glass jar.

So the manuscript needs the right hole to slot into.

And will this publisher be the right one for it?

I've been toying with the idea of continuing with the second manuscript, filling that up until it's full, until it's ready, and sending it to be published first. Not sure, though.

I need to write more.