Nick Piombino, "Writing and Free Association":
"The method of self disclosure called 'free association' wherein one writes or speaks all one's thoughts in consecutive order [...] is comparable to serious attempts to read, write, and understand poetry, that directs attention to the totality of the thinking process. Memories and awareness of the present collapse into an experiential field, composed of verbal presences, which can be re-sounded for various interpretations and alternative directions."
Watten notes, aptly, that this is different from the approach of someone like Clark Coolidge, who seeks to do away with the self, in a way, so that (Watten's summation) "the mediating persona [is] abandoned" (52) With Piombino, the mediating persona is central