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>Anyway, to turrn his remarks >back on him: It's an unvaluing of your reader to think you know >(being an artist and all that) more than he/she does, and can >create with certainty a poem that communicates something >the reader doesn't already know. I'm not at all certain that was the point of what Ashbery was saying. Even Frost warns against the o-so-planned work, puzzling why anyone would want to write a story of which they already know every detail. The end result, almost always, is dull, because it's colouring in rather than making up; and perhaps it's more unvaluing of the reader to bore him or her. Communication is a fraught subject in poetry; a poem's certainly not there to educated anyone. It might as well begin with a lump in the throat. Cheers A