Poems in Pockets: Poem Among World

1. The world is personal. It is composed of the environment that immediately surrounds us. The Poet may pretend that the world as a whole concerns her, but any and everything that amuses or inspires the Poet can be traced back to the spaces she has temporarily inhabited or continues to inhabit. This is not to say necessarily that the Poet is self-obsessed, only that she writes his spaces most comfortably and accurately. The Poet’s World is not interchangeable with her experiences. All experiences take place in some sort of space, whether that space is physical, metaphorical or figurative, and a Poet’s space is thus her World.

2. A Poet who aspires to be “worldly” (that is, one who consistently chases a profound idea in her own work or who expects to discover infinite horizons in every poem she encounters) is a shallow Poet. By always defaulting to the universal ideal, this sort of Poet doesn’t even manage to scratch the surface; the extent of her poetic aspirations is simply too broad. The successful Poet does not resist her inclination to write about her spaces and thus, she write more genuinely.

3. Poems are eventually suspended among the Poet’s World in pockets. These pockets are invisible and are akin to an isolation of sorts, (an incident, perhaps, but not consistently). Pockets are found everywhere among the Poet’s World, but the Poet’s entire World is not a pocket in and of itself. Pockets are comparable to vacuums, but instead of holding Nothingness, they accommodate a Something. These Somethings can be objects, people, concepts, and events, but they are ultimately limitless. Pockets and the Somethings inside them are always informed by the Poet’s World or atmosphere. Two Poets may inhabit a similar World but the ways in which they navigate and interpret it will always vary.

4. A pocket with a gripping (to the Poet) Something inside is fodder for a Poem. This phenomenon should not be confused with inspiration in the traditional sense of the word. Inspiration is too often associated with the romantic, the positive, the uplifting. The inspiration that is derived from the Something is comparable to a stimulus of some kind. This stimulus is always able to be traced back to the Poet’s World. It is up to the Poet to take the Something and shape it into a Poem in whatever way she sees fit. In this way, the Poet acts as negotiator of the Something. The Poet places her aesthetic upon the Something and readies it for turning back out into her World as a Poem. A Poem is a Something that is manifest, but not fundamentally blatant. A Poem is not always “wordable.” Because Somethings are limitless, it can be assumed that a Poem is not always a word.


5. There is no such thing as a small Poem or a small-minded Poem. No Poet or person otherwise is equipped to judge a Poem as such because they do not have the same knowledge of the author-Poet’s space. Criticism is encouraged when it comes to Poetry, but only if it is acknowledged as basically arbitrary. There is no such thing as a Master Poet in the sense that a Master Poet supposedly masters the entire spectrum of past, present, and future Poetry. A Poet can only master his own Poems and these Poems are forever changing. A Poet’s World is always evolving and not always by the choice of the Poet, particularly when it comes to the mind space. The Poet is hardly in control of the majority of these changes, therefore any Poet’s attempt to guide or influence another Poet’s work will ultimately fall flat or derail the Poet’s work from its natural course. Poetry-writing can be learned, but it is also a natural inclination and a natural process