"Let me reduce my argument to the hopelessly simplistic: poems, I am
saying are neither about 'subjects'
nor about 'themselves'. They are
necessarily about other poems, a
poem is a response to a poem, as a
poet is a response to a poet, or a
person to his parent. Trying to write
a poem takes the poet back to the
origins of what a poem first was for
him, and so takes the poet back
beyond the pleasure principle to the
decisive initial encounter and
response that began in him."