Journal means to me that it s in process notes, scribbling. I want finished art. Sometimes that s useful. I think poetry is a desperate act, and if it s not a desperate act, then you probably don t need to do it. Because it has to be so necessary in some way that you do that poetry in particular.
Poetry is so useless absolutely no cash value.
It s an act of desperation. A friend of mine, a teacher, says there s no doubt that poetry saved his life got him out of the impoverished life he lived as a child in Detroit. It gave him something beyond his life, and I think it did that for me, on a different level. But there is a kind of spiritual, aesthetic impoverishment that one longs to transcend. Poetry can help with that.