The Secret Wish Of Poetry Is To

The Religion Of The Short Poem, In Every Age And In Every Literature, Has A Single Commandment: Less Is Always More. The Short Poem Rejects Preamble And Summary. It's About All And Everything, The Metaphysics Of A Few Words Surrounded By Much Silence. …the Short Poem Is A Match Flaring Up In A Dark Universe.

If The Sky Falls They Shall Have Clouds For Supper.

Here In The United States, We Speak With Reverence Of Authentic Experience. We Write Poems About Our Daddies Taking Us Fishing And Breaking Our Hearts By Making Us Throw The Little Fish Back Into The River. We Even Tell The Reader The Kind Of Car We Were Driving, The Year And The Model, To Give The Impression That It’s All True. It’s Because We Think Of Ourselves As Journalists Of A Kind. Like Them, We’ll Go Anywhere For A Story. Don’t Believe A Word Of It. As Any Poet Can Tell You, One Often Sees Better With Eyes Closed Than With Eyes Wide Open.

The Secret Wish Of Poetry Is To Stop Time.

The Ambition Of Much Of Today's Literary Theory Seems To Be To Find Ways To Read Literature Without Imagination.