In response to a question from Pearl London, Louise Glück answers:

I've never had much problem having a sense of where a movement ended and where I wanted to break a stanza.

Though what happens is, you learn to write a poem that breaks stanzas in a certain way, that takes certain kinds of linguistic, syntactic turns to stand for closure. You recognize that turn as closure, and as soon as that moment of recognition happens, then you've got to stop doing it.

Because then what you're doing is simply making of everything the same poem. You look at a tree, and you turn that into a tree poem, and you look at a rock, and you turn that into a rock poem. They all have the same arc.

As soon as you can recognize a consistent shaping principle, recognize that a certain kind of sentence is always a cue to you for an end, then you've got to resist the cue. 

This is the better said version of what I have attempted to state occasionally here and often in day-to-day making.

Because I adore sharing company with much of what I shoot --
friends in perfect awkwardness, trees around my house during my dogwalk, strangers holding hands on the street, etc. -- 

I become attached to my own consistency, my own syntactic turns to stand for closure.

I  know how to shoot it to make for a desired outcome. It's so limiting. Why am I shooting for an outcome?
I'm cutting short some of the best parts of the process -- the exploration, the right turn instead of the left.

When's the last time I tried something (gave it a full-handed attempt) that didn't work?

I gotta stop doing it. Louise Glück said so.

I don't want to turn a tree into a tree photograph. I wanna photograph a tree.

* * *

I have a new favorite photograph. I don't remember the artist's name.
It's a self-portrait, though you wouldn't know it for quite some time.

I don't want to share it here yet. I want to look at it on the wall in the MFAH, wanna let it be there and in my head only.

If you've been there with me, I've stood with you in front of it and pointed out a thousand details.

I've turned my body upside down to scour the details.
You've pointed things out to me too. I remember every one of them, and then I forget so I can find them again.

Yet nothing in it is hidden. It's not a fucking tree poem, it's a tree. (It's not a tree.)

I don't want my linguistic turns to stand in for the work I'm not doing (fast enough, well, thoughtfully enough).

* * *

Ashley & I somewhat argued about this Trinh T. Minh-ha quote to which I became somewhat attached a few years back:

meaning should be prevented from coming to closure at either what is said or what is shown

I think Ashley is right: meaning is there. It can't be prevented.
And how priviledged are we to believe that we can prevent it? How controlling of me to attempt total prevention.

(I do the same with Consequence.)

I'm afraid of meaning because I've let meaning stand in for closure.
Whether I like it or not, meaning is there. It's not just expression that will necessarily surface.

But the closure? Maybe I don't want the closure. Maybe it's only closure when it surprises you (as the maker).

Maybe otherwise it's only comfort, my own consistency comforting me.

So I'm gonna re-frame the statement, with the addition of the Glück:

Closure should be prevented from coming to meaning
at either what is said or what is shown.

from door in the skin to skin in the door, 2015