A Major Factor

Poetics: 6/4/23

A good poem does not hide its words. A good poem does not hide the page with words either.

As in Impressionist’s technique of identifiable and insistent brush strokes left an awareness of the flat surface they were being painted on.*

I am not here to go somewhere else and do not want to be swept away forgetting what it is that propels me. As in a good novel the words are are used to make the story that takes me.

The words are why I am here.

Breath-temp gust moist lips late with runny hours - John Godfrey

fair splay/pay—the stuff myths are made of - Wanda Coleman

These lines do not struggle to suck the reader in, they fight to be themselves. Each word carries its own weight. There is a challenge in this as reader and writer of poems.

Something exists in the here and now with no dependence on before or after. - Kazim Ali

Is there a need to separate the word from its line? In the poem nothing exists alone. At the same time of each word being by itself.

This has not even begun the discussion of each word’s sound. Of the poet choosing their own music as a guiding principle. For me, there is no word without its sound.

A good poem is in the space before the falling.

* Trewin Copplestone, Modern Art