Poetry

One way of looking at it is to think there's a lot of poetry out there. Another way of looking at it is to think there's hardly any poetry out there.

For me, a poem is a thing with the artistic power to move a reader into another dimension. The reading soul is disoriented, rather amazed. An actual poem is open, strange, and timeless. A poem is profound, is spiritual, is as momentous in principle and in presence as Beethoven's music.  

Otherwise, it's just someone saying something -- blather, blather, blather.

When you find an actual poem, it will be a homecoming. The poet, from a shadowy matrix of haunted seasons, metaphysical events, and historical consciousness, returns reading souls to the bourne of symbols, to the region of early wonder. The poet is a subtle fantasist discovering textures of the uncanny and artistically layering them into an almost familiar substance. 

Otherwise, it's just someone saying something. Otherwise, it's not Adam Zagajewski or Ilya Kaminsky.

No one will agree with me about this, and that's okay. I realized some months back that my mind has become an alien eggplant darkly curving in an outskirt, outlaw garden.