Poetry [Recalculating]

Poetry

Imagine poetry as a series of terraces, some vast, some no bigger than a pinprick, overlooking the city of language.

Poetry shows the ink the way out of the ink bottle.

Poetry’s social function is not to express but rather to explore the possibilities for expression.

Poetry is difficulty that stays difficult.

Poetry starts in the present but immediately takes you to its many pasts, through its many paths.

Poetry is to the classroom what a body is to a cemetery.

Poetry is metadata without code, free-base tagging, cascading style sheets with undefined markers.

Poetry is too important to be left to its own devices

If poetry is a shell game it’s because it’s all about the shells not the peas.

The poetry is not in speaking to the dead but listening to the dead.

Poetry fakes nothing actually.

Poetry wants to be free. (Or, if not, available for long-term loan. )

Poetry is a secret society hiding in plain sight, open to ear and mind’s eye.

Poetry abhors a narrative

Poetry is a holding space, a folded grace, in which objects held most dear disappear, returning as radiant moments of memory’s forgiving home.

Poetry doesn’t exist to be understood or to solicit accolades or dismissals.

Poetry’s power (some poetry’s power ) may be that its appeal is not universal but specific ( not popular but partisan ); we don’t all agree.

Poetry often operates in the spaces between intention & serendipity.

Poetry’s not about what it says but what it does.

Poetry should be silent, unread, invisible, inconceivable. The true poem can never be written or heard.

June 22, 2016