[Suzerain of Sheol]

@your third paragraph, yes, yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say. Leaving aside stuff like the Death of the Author, everything you write is a psychological footprint you leave behind. Even if you painstakingly make sure that nothing of yourself makes it into the piece, that still says something about you.

And I think in those collegiate situations, there's something of a formal community of "poets" (as in, people who really do consider poetry a central part of their career) and those people, in sharing their work with one another, end up defining what poetry is in the modern age based upon the way it has evolved among them. I suppose the reason I single this group out from any other is because it commands a certain authority, or tries to pass itself off that way.

I end up looking at some of these hyper-literate poems by the "masters", littered with references to any number of obscure sources (and that's another reason I think it fails; there's simply far too much STUFF anymore, unless you're referencing super-tired motifs like mythology, in which case you're doing nothing new or, really, creative), and I end up thinking that it's just an organization of someone's collective thoughts, perhaps on a subject; it's still a still-life of a mind-state, and I feel that by trying to pass it off as more, they end up making it unapproachable.