In other words, don't read it if'n you don't want to. Obviously.
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When I write or read poetry, what I am looking for is a kind of knowledge that breathes, that bears the shape and rhythm of our world. We live in a created and creative world, after all– the fertility of this place is unbounded. Sometimes I picture our universe as a tide of energy flowing constantly from God’s creative passion, and all of its diverse people and objects and spirits as manifestations of that one energy. We try to match the pulse of this energy, and that is holiness. This is an essentially creative view of the world, because to be like God, we must be creators as well. We want to place ourselves as artists in the center of His energy; we want to match the flow and rhythms of that tide, match the patterns of God’s unsettling, dangerous, yet transcendently lovely creative power.There’s much I don’t know about how this works. But I am at least convinced of three attributes that poetry written by these beliefs has: it is held to the highest standard of craftsmanship, it is accessible, and it is resonant. Einstein once said that God is subtle, but not malicious. I paraphrase: God is subtle, but He is not esoteric. He is not trying to trick anyone. He wants to communicate and be understood– God, after all, is Word, is revelation. Thus, I seek a poetry of revelation, a poetry of connectivity between the author and the reader. There’s no room here for the self-indulgence of works that are only meaningful to the author, or that are vague enough to mean anything to anyone. This is only complicating what I believe we instinctively know– art is communication, and the driving desire behind communication is to be apprehended, to be fully revealed and understood. There’s no need for the alienation that often arises between author and reader.
Thus, paradoxically, creating like God means creating on a human scale, with a human heart and sympathies; it results in a poetry of generosity that longs to give itself away. Pablo Neruda wrote, "I have always wanted the hands of people to be seen in poetry. . . I have always preferred a poetry where the fingerprints show. . . A poetry of bread, where everyone may eat." This last metaphor feels especially right and whole. I want to create poetry that is nourishing, that welcomes people to itself like a full table. Like the food we both produce and consume, poetry should both sustain life and be the product of life.
The perfect poem, I think, would have the craftsmanship and integrity to appeal to skilled readers, and yet be something that the person who doesn’t like poetry could read, and find a piece of themselves or of their world that they hadn’t previously known to look for. Such poetry may not accomplish much in the way of artsy cleverness, or reference and allusion to our literary canon, but then that is not what I want. I prefer a poetry that is closer to our collective heart than it is to our fading cultural memory.
There is an elegance to our universe; we see continually how all its divergent parts ultimately serve the whole. In keeping with this, I believe that art can never be simply for itself. It must be fertile– it must serve life, even (or perhaps especially) if this service is unquantifiable and mysterious. I believe that the highest function of any art is to teach people to love their own lives, to train them to see and hear and feel so that when they shut the book, the life they return to is a life deeply rooted in the best things of the earth, a life well-tended and beloved.
