Modern poetry is not a way of delivering a message, it is delivering an experience. If the message was all that mattered, poetry would be unnecessary. There are simpler straightforward ways to deliver a message. Tweets come to mind.
Poetry is the attempt to make language, in every aspect of word and syntax, work as hard as it can to contribute to a meaning-experience. This means that the poet works hard to produce the poem and the reader works hard to understand it. The modern poet not only considers the meaning of the words but also the order and appearance of words on the page. Everything, the words, the order, the assembly, even the punctuation or lack thereof, every aspect pushes the point toward an experience.
For instance, you may have discovered a poem posted October 9, 2015 on this website.
The Stranger
How familiar the stranger.
Hear him laugh
in the shadow behind your eyes.
Aha!
He recognizes himself
standing tall in your dark.
The first oddity, describing the stranger as familiar. Most of the people surrounding us in the daily movements of life are strangers. We all pass by strangers who remain unknown. We also encounter strangers who become acquaintances, maybe friends. It is easy to project our own psychological material on strangers. They look a certain way, perhaps a hoodie or baggy sweats or a stylish dress. We overhear them speak with an accent, they walk with a peculiar gait. They evoke a certain reaction in us. We come to quick biased opinions.
But this stranger is within us, living in the shadow behind our eyes, out of sight and out of mind. But not out of our unconscious. This stranger is an aspect of the self we do not know, perhaps do not want to know. This internal stranger is not shy but ‘standing tall’. Covered by dark, he is safe from the judgments of our egos. We do not look in the dark. He can continue to act furtively in our lives.