Ariana Reines’s Wave of Blood has a beautiful insight about how poetry outlasts almost everything else human beings do or make.

I think what gets stronger for writers is an instinct for when something is or isn’t working and over time you acquire more techniques to fix it. And a lot of that is actually development as a reader.

In the back of my mind right now is the AI “art” worshippers’ conviction that process is an obstacle to creation instead of being the whole thing. Like: what if we just removed the work part? What if we just removed the effort? I think it’s quite beautiful that Louise Gluck would say writing never gets easier. It shouldn’t! Ease isn’t the point.