[Thanks to Ron Silliman for posting this link on this blog]
Nick Laird on the Physicality of Language
You should put that in a poem. A thing to say to the people who write poems; the offering of some strange coincidence or anecdote. Poets, if they’re like me, sip their drink and agree, privately certain it won’t give rise to anything at all. You can make fiction and drama from reported stories, from hearsay and incident, but not poetry. Here is Edward Thomas, chastening the Belgian symbolist Maeterlinck: “Anything, however small, may make a poem; nothing, however great, is certain to.” This explains why the job of poet laureate could be described as an exercise in technique rather than talent.
So where do poems come from? Michael Longley has a witty, slightly exasperated response to that FAQ: If I knew that, I’d go there.