{"id":36465,"date":"2026-10-22T10:21:27","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:21:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=36465"},"modified":"2026-10-22T10:21:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:21:29","slug":"reply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=36465","title":{"rendered":"reply"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">No, how could I believe in my poetry<br>If even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/2026\/11\/05\/poem-david-plante\/\">David Plante<\/a> disbelieves in his?<br>But I, too, can ask why I want to write,<br>Expecting no success but enjoying<br>A cool pool of words in which to slide down,<br>Noises fading in the muffling depths, or<br>Like rinsing mud from the side of a bucket,<br>Leaving a hot pan to soak until the stain<br>Softens, or trailing fingers through water<br>To mark it momentarily with my mind.<br>It is not what happens but how it feels<br>To choose to cool a hot thought slowly down,<br>To shape a portion of fluid into form.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15142\">signal<\/a> (2015); <a href=\"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=11183\">a poem should<\/a> (2013)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No, how could I believe in my poetryIf even David Plante disbelieves in his?But I, too, can ask why I want to write,Expecting no success but enjoyingA cool pool of words in which to slide down,Noises fading in the muffling depths, orLike rinsing mud from the side of a bucket,Leaving a hot pan to soak [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36465"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36474,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36465\/revisions\/36474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}