They love to wonder and explore.
Hard lot!
But the poem, no matter how full of possibility, has to exist!
To conduct oneself, to behave. How a poem acts marks its individual character. A poem by Glandolyn Blue does not sound like a poem by Timothy Sure. To pretend, feign, impersonate. That, too, yes and always, because self-consciousness is its own pretension, and has been from its beginning; the human mind is capable of a great elastic theatre.
Ralph Angel joined the group chat
The poem is an interpretation of weird theatrical shit.
The weird theatrical shit is what goes on around us every day of our lives; an animal of only instinct, Johnny Ferret, has in his actions drama, but no theater; theater requires that you draw a circle around the action and observe it from outside the circle; in other words, self-consciousness is theatre.
Everyone knows that if you query poets about how their poems begin, the answer is always the same:
a phrase, a line, a scrap of language, a rhythm, an image, something seen, heard, witnessed, or imagined.
And the lesson is always the same, and young poets recognize this to be one of the most important lessons they can learn:
if you have any idea for a poem, an exact grid of intent, you are on the wrong path,
a dead-end alley, at the top of a cliff you haven’t even climbed.
This is a lesson that can only be learned by trial and error.
I believe many fine poems begin with ideas, but if you tell too many faces this, or tell it too loudly, they will get the wrong idea.
