While I realize how statistically plausible it is, it astounds and disappoints me continually how badly people misunderstand and misappreciate poetry in their attempts to "interpret it", as if this was some joke of an English class.

"What does the grapefruit stand for?'

"A grapefruit."

"But what does it mean?"

"What it says in the poem."

It is something of a hardship to revel in my own improved writing while people are asking such questions. [These past few weeks I've been working a lot, and am delighted to watch myself.]Most of them seem entirely unable to deal with the complexities and subtlties of metaphores that are not childishly simplistic, one-to-one and direct, but also entirely unable to take a phrase at face value before deciphering the metaphore which may be there. It's as if their set of mental catagories was less nuanced, less developed, and smaller than mine. As if they cannot easily relate physically unlike things by abstraction, except in common, popular cases. It disappoints me.

My poems are good.