Hal Sirowitz

Some people argue that you should write about what you know. I think you should do that to a certain extant but at the same time you should be writing about what you want to know. When I start writing a poem, I seldom know how it's going to end. I let my unconscious decide. The novelist Graham Greene used to go to bed each night and dream about what his characters did next. I don't go to such lengths. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little when I say my unconscious finishes the poem. All I'm saying is that I try to give up control and let the poem write itself. It brings to mind something Robert Frost once said: "No surprise in the writer; no surprise in the reader," meaning that the author has to let go of the conscious part of creating and allow the poem to develop independently.

-Hal Sirowitz

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