thinking about how “restraint” is often prescribed in writing. how this concept seems rooted in an anglo masculinist stoicism. related to the fear of “sentimentality” and the principle of “less is more.” i love so-called excess. overflow. the uncareful direct emotional outburst

idk maybe white male writers like to claim they’re beyond direct expression of emotion, they’re post-emotion, post-expression, as a way to cover up how out of touch they are with emotion

i write to feel things. i read to feel things. i’ve read a lot of work where i know i’m mainly meant to be impressed by the linguistic surface. being impressed gets tiring. i want to be moved. i want to be changed.

i cry when i read a particularly generous and kind text from a friend. i cry when i think about my parents dying. i cry when i think about my own death. i cry when i hear mandarin spoken after a long time in english only spaces. i’d like to write an ode to these tears.

& i love laughing, loud, as often as possible. lol i tried being a poet of restraint. & since i tend to overwrite, i do end up cutting moments of overstatement. but i never cut the messy emotional turns. which i do get advised to do by very smart readers/editors. but i refuse

& this is why i tell students: don’t worry so much about making a Beautiful Poem at first. write toward the emotional mess. the knot. the untangleable, unmanageable, unanswerable

it’s important to distinguish between overstatement or redundancy vs. true emotional complication, including the kinds of complication that make your poem lose its lovely shape. i think a poet needs to stay open to the poem’s need to grow into some other shape