I hung a birdfeeder in our backyard, filled it with seed, and waited. One day. Two days. Several days, I waited. Would avian diners arrive at my modest meal? A cardinal appeared, head darting nervously between pecks of seed. In the brief introduction to his book New and Collected Poems, the Polish Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote: “I strongly believe in the passivity of a poet, who receives every poem as a gift from his daimonion or, if you prefer, his Muse. He should be humble enough not to ascribe what is received to his own virtues. At the same time, however, his mind and his will should be alert.” A poet spends much time waiting. Then, a yellow finch of imagination, an image, an idea, a metaphor, a sequence of words, lands at the feeder hungry to be fed. It is the poet’s work to feed that new arrival, always adding clarity, sometimes complexity, sometimes simplicity, caring for the poem until it is strong enough to fly off on its own.
May/2019