Franz Wright on Composition

“I think ideally I would like, in a poem, to operate by way of suggestion, to say only enough to enable the perceptive and wide-awake reader to have his or her own experience or interpretation of some things I might have felt, noticed, thought about–and a renewed sense of awe at his or her own comparable experiences. In some way any good piece of writing is a mirror, don’t you think. Or maybe a window, as George Orwell said, which is not supposed to draw too much attention to itself but provide the sight of something else. In any event, I like your analogy of the sculptor. Although I must say when things are going well in the composition of a poem, I have more the sense of being the stone that’s being worked on.”