A Poet Monologues Dramatically

Is all writing memoir?

"The ink spilt on poetry should hope to
Return to the water table of pre-
cursory tears, as I said this afternoon.
What's more, confession without penitence 
Is abortive, preening, proud. Take Lowell: when
He removed the mask, vainglorious scandal,
Unbecoming history, truth in all its 
Nudity came hissing unrepentant 
Into our garden. I'll not go too far,
But does no-one recall when poets grieved
To exhume their skeletons? Hardy, Words-
worth, Eliot sang their failures with notes
Oblique, while now—alas—confession is 
The conscience's opiate, producing 
Naught but vain behests for absolution 
By applause. Sing, rather, others' dismay.
I'll turn my pen to matters befitting 
Decasyllables: the mythic shadow 
Of Quentin Compson, in honeysuckle
Drowning, his death sentence his jealousy:

In CHARLES you waded forty times before
And, time-confounded, dreamt of quiet bones
Undifferent from the sand, below the floor
Of democratic waters; eyeball-stones,
As promised by the clock; PHLEBAS’ lot. 
The word rang out: incest, that deed which fright-
ens even hell (still better than the hot
Disgrace she felt with DALTON—not delight 
Surely, in the Dionysian wood).
If only I—you, rather, if you could— 

Now sweat has reached my eyelashes, 
It's time for sleep—and I remain 
A willow by the traintracks in the rain, 
Subliming the cacophony, 
The screeching in the back, the night-
mare never banished quite: his bed, 
She in it, scorching tongues and wretch-
ed fingers searching— a whale is
Turning turtle in me!
Lurching, lurching, lurching. . ."