We are comfortable with the fact that we cannot know personally what happened in the world before we were born, yet we are uncomfortable with the notion that we will stop engaging with time at some point in the future.
From John Barton
The reader's challenge is to replicate the experiment by reading the poem and to draw their own conclusions.
An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.
Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.
Reading should be a repeat performance.
You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.
Most victims of my autobiographical verse are either far too polite, remarkably understanding unaware that I have written poems about them.
Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.
In the past, poetry came in the form of spells and chants used to effect change.
The experiment of the poem is mostly intuitive. I write the first draft, pulling in the various elements that interest me, in the hope that their being combined will lead to some kind of insight.
8 perspectives
6 perspectives
4 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives