Monday Morning Quote: David Huddle on Ambiguity

After drafting the poem through to its tentative conclusion on the second morning after I'd begun it, I thought about it all day. As I carried out my errands, I conducted a craft discussion with myself about what the poem needed. I was aware that with the word "power" I'd simply named one of the poem's main thematic concerns—a move in composition that I almost always consider a mistake. Naming the theme—which usually occurs in the title or the conclusion of a work—often robs a poem of its natural ambiguity....

—David Huddle, "About my 'Basket': Looking for Closure," in Introspections: American Poets on One of Their Own Poems, edited by Robert Pack and Jay Parini