What does it matter if there are poets or poems?
XI
In poetry, as elsewhere, nature isn't what it used to be.
The poem resists. It resists coming into being. It resists eloquence.
It resists transmitting unpleasant or embarrassing knowledge.
It resists grammatical constraints. It resists moving away from simple utterance.
It resists revision. It resists completion. It resists success. Hopefully, the poet resists as well.
XLI
After a point, even the poem can grow bored with its own devices.
XLII
It seems as if the able use of metaphor has precipitously fallen off since doubt was cast upon language's ability to represent the real, and yet simile, a far less interesting trope, somehow continues to thrive.
VIII
The idea of audience is a nuisance born of the need for spectacle. Poems haunting the precarious dialectic between existence and extinction do not need it. Their magic is dependent on the private experience of separate individuals.
XV
The poet must understand seduction, because even capricious human attention is susceptible to courtship.
