Ted Kooser on Self-Indulgence in Poetry

“Perhaps there have always been people who took up writing poems just so they could talk about themselves, but self-indulgent poetry almost always disappears in time, a victim of its own failure to engage the needs and interests of others. It takes a grateful audience to keep a poem alive. Expression of feeling in poetry ought to be measured against the reader’s tolerance for such expression.” – Ted Kooser