I can’t tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can’t tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.
Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.
I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.
I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal.
Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.
Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.
For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown.
The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.
In nature there are few sharp lines.
