147 Faulkner Writes a Middle-Aged Ars Poetica Sandra L. Faulkner When I write an ars poetica (i.e. the art of poetry), I demonstrate my attention to and concern with poetic craft. I believe that revisiting ars poetica every so often highlights the value of poetic relexivity and concern with the aesthetics of poetry making (Faulkner, 2007). I offer you a feminist relational scholar’s middle-aged relection on aesthetics and the use of poetry as social science. i Letter to Faulkner from the Fluff and Fold Assumptions lie behind the work of all writers. —Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town Dear Sandra, you know poets still believe in hand-crafted words, write slowly in pen on blank pages with spiral bound notebooks lifted from the coffee shop next to school. They never write in pen because it seeps like a grease stain on the twelfth revision. Poets sit in empty rooms, make it up. They write on screen about their successful affairs make mothers weep with all that blasphemy. Listen Faulkner, you must fold poems like sheets think in iambs for hours without sleep take a crayon and scribble it all out. Wait for weeks, the words will tumble in dreams to the mind’s ridiculous arenas. That is how the writing is done. Love, Dick. i