Intention and Critique

[Achebe]

If the author doesn't know what he is writing, and writing is subconscious and "therapy" why even edit at all? Especially if the editing is coming from people who are outside of your subconcious. Perhaps editing based on critique actually hurts your poem?

Because a well crafted poem is therapy well done
Editing based on critique sometimes hurts the poem because sometimes the critique is rather lame

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To illustrate with an example, if it was possible to express this baby universe of thoughts, feelings and unattended grocery lists in simpler language, randy old Tom would’ve done it. I find the last two lines to be of ineffable beauty and most likely expressing complex, fuzzy thoughts that can’t ever be precipitated with hydrogen sulphide in the rational  mind’s laboratory:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.