Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

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 unknown.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

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.

Once every five hundred years or so a summary statement about poetry comes along that we cant imagine ourselves living without.

I am grateful for – though I cant keep up with – the flood of articles theses and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

If a poem is each time new then it is necessarily an act of discovery a chance taken a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster.

Definition rationality and structure are ways of seeing but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.

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.

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.

If we ask a vague question such as What is poetry? we expect a vague answer such as Poetry is the music of words or Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.

You have your identity when you find out not what you can keep your mind on but what you cant keep your mind off.

Questions structure and so to some extent predetermine answers.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time – as with a sonnet – the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day as the poets health sight his anticipations moods fears

I cant tell you where a poem comes from what it is or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I cant tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling to be recognised by burning.

Theres something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.

Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to then we must ineluctably be included.

Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings to the unknown and returns us to our rational structured selves refreshed.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems I would suggest you do two things: first while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

Thats a wonderful change thats taken place and so most poetry today is published if not directly by the person certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself working with his friends.

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste judgement deduction.