A poem is a carefully constructed accident. An experience suddenly comes crashing into a poet’s life unsolicited. Breaking news, news breaking out of the mundane daily world. A shake-up, wake-up call. The poet is obliged to report the accident. It’s what poets do, make reports to the world.
If the poem is sharply constructed, it has the potential to crash effectively into other people’s life and leave a new constellation of experience, sight, and insight. This is what poetry does. Objects, sensations, ideas, never before collided, are wrenched into one charged and vital unit, a poem.
A reader somehow discovers the poem, then notices that the poem has uncovered something in him or her. This happy accident does not leave one impaired, but rather repaired, standing up alive in a deeper, richer world.
2015