American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.
I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.
American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.
From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.
I'm passing on a tradition of which I am part. There's a long line of poets who went before me, and I'm another one, and I'm hoping to pass that on to other younger, or newer, poets than myself.
Sometimes the archaism of the language when it's spoken is why we are all in love with the Irish today.
