The poet's other readers are the ancient poets, who look upon the freshly written pages from an incorruptible distance. Their poetic forms are permanent, and it is difficult to create new forms which can approach them.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
One can't write for all readers. A poet cannot write for people who don't like poetry.
Poets are like the decathletes of literature.
Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.
Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back.
And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.
Poems are endlessly renewable resources. Whatever you bring to them, at whatever stage of life, gets mirrored back, refracted, reread in new ways.
Poems are not read: they are reread. Reread the poem, then read between the lines, then look at it, then watch it, then peek at it: handle it like an object. Contemplate its shadows, angles and dimensions.