| Dear Steven: What makes the poem
happen,
what changes it from being a grocery
list or a set of instructions, is what goes
on between the lines. It’s as if the only
real task of the words in the poem is to
map out the edges of the device, so we
can at least see where it begins and we end.
After that, the things take on a life of their
own and it doesn’t matter whether they’re
in the company of heroes or trying
to bear fruit among hard sayings. Each gathers
its imaginary numbers, its fair
share of arrogance until it has enough
strength to appear like a cobra coiled in our
tracks, silent, unafraid and smelling our voices.
At this point in the language of the poem,
something seems to enter the mind of God,
the one who lives outside the box where Roethke’s
ghost still lumbers like an old bear making
his way up stream. The wound of knowledge lives
in such poems and always knows our names. |