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-. She (Maggie O Sullivan) has herself planted a forest - Planted a forest! Maggie? On her ownsome? Where? When? Can we go see it? But my real question is another question: Is the desiring 'I' related to the desiring 'eye'? What is the answer? What was the question? My problem with questions of this ilk (not the Maggie's Forest questions - sorry, in our 30 year friendship I've never actually seen Maggie in anything other than 3 inch stilettos and pencil skirts!! Hence my curiosity about her planting a forest.) - I mean the desiring 'I' thingnybob. No poet, guy or gal, sits down and thinks 'Righty ho, think I'll write a Desiring 'I' poem today'. But when someone decides this will make a meaty paper to give at a conference (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way rather a cautionary way) it becomes a 'reality'. That 'reality' is then dropped onto the work of unsuspecting poets who were in all innocence just writing a poem in the way they write their poems. So the poet's work (and I'm talking ALL poetry now - it matters not what denomination you belong to) ceases to be something to enjoy (or not) to excite (or not) to identify with (or not) to ad infinitum (or not) - it becomes something third removed from the poet and poem. It leaves the heart of the poet/poem floundering and at the mercy of a concept. And because it become third removed it becomes so open to interpretation that it almost becomes meaningless. When Elizabeth posted the convincing (and beautiful) excerpt from Denise Riley I thought I was 'getting it' as a valid concept: there is something fearsomely and ferociously domestic in Denise's writing which always transcends the domestic. But when cris expands it into Maggie's work it falls away into an amorphous concept of ''We all have an 'I' and we all have 'Desire' and we do it with varying degrees of passion - in other words we all did it myyyywaaayyyy. So I suppose my last question has to be - does it really matter? G.