Louis Jenkins

Many people ask the most common question about poetry, "what's the poem about?". I would disagree with them and ask "who is the ending for?". Somewhere in the ending the poem's tone and style might shift and there will be a connection with the reader. I think Jenkins likes to connect with himself, before he connects with anyone else. He truly writes for himself.
Jenkins's poetry are like a collection of ideas that are put together in a poetic fashion, but he does not write for the people who read his poems. For instance in his poem "football" there is an obvious narrative voice, but it moves from story to self discovery. This movement excludes the reader from grabbing at the meaning of the poem before Jenkins does. Now the reader is not completely expelled from gaining any sort of purpose from the poem, but they have to apply Jenkins's experience to themselves. It's an open ended way to end a poem, where it allows the reader to take from it what they like.
Now this is very typical in poetry but before he ends his poetry, he just points out observations he has made and I don't think he cares if the audience has any sort of reaction. But he does not care for cliche or randomness, he just writes for the sake of poetry.