Jean Valentine said that one should write as if there is a person one is writing to that will implicitly understand everything. This seems to be exactly the opposite of what is preached by many editors of journals and teachers in our current American culture. They demand context. They themselves write as if there is no point in writing if the writing is not explicit. We are warned as writers that not only the ‘reader’ as the unknown reader of your poems but the actual reader/editor of the journal you are submitting to will not give time to a poem in which they cannot understand ‘what is going on’. To counter this I would say that Emily Dickinson, who is considered, with Whitman, to have inaugurated an authentically American style, and whose reputation has only increased since the first publication of her poetry, wrote in the way Valentine recommends. Considering Dickinson’s influence on Valentine, it is probably from reading Dickinson that Valentine had the idea. Stein, Eliot, Stevens, Ashberry, all followed the same principle. I think it is this principle that liberated them to write the way they did. If a reader has to take the time to wonder what I meant in a poem, that is fine. I want them to wonder: for me at least, wonder is the best possible state to be in.