On some occasions aesthetics (or, more accurately, the search for aesthetic approval) can impinge upon and even undermine our poetic intent. We need, maybe, to become less self-conscious in our writing. James Joyce, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, wrote: “The mystery of esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the god of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”