Sound & Sense: An Open Thread

The third of our recurring opportunities — currently, every other Thursday — to learn what your fellow readers are reading and writing

Workshop of François Boucher, Erato, The Muse of Love Poetry, c. 1760 (Wikimedia Commons)

Two considerable poets have independently mentioned something to me in recent months — something I’m not sure what to do with. They both described overflowing with ideas for poems while they were young but lacking the technical skill to pull those ideas off. And then, in old age, possessed of endless technique, they seemed to lack much to say with that all that technical ability they had trained up in themselves over the years.

A common phenomenon, I suspect. For every poet who — like Yeats in his Last Poems or my beloved Rhina Espaillat — can explode in new verse in old age, there are probably a dozen who have little new to say beyond the fact that they are old, and death is near, and not much seems new. They do tend, however, to say it very well.

So, what are you thinking about? Reading? Writing? This is an open-mic thread, available to both free and paid subscribers, where we learn what’s in your…