We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.
One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear.
It hardly seems worthwhile to point out the shortsightedness of those practitioners who would have us believe that the form of the poem is merely its shape.
Poems are endlessly renewable resources. Whatever you bring to them, at whatever stage of life, gets mirrored back, refracted, reread in new ways.
I would come to understand there is no poem separable from its source. I began to see that poems are not just an individual florescence. They are also a vast root system growing down into ideas and understandings. Almost unbidden, they tap into the history and evolution of art and language.
Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others.
I always say that I'll have a go and see whether the poem works and if it does, then fine.
The importance of poetry is not measured, finally, by what the poet says but by how he says it.
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.