Poets have No Biographies²
There’s nothing in the world for
Which a Poet will give up Writing³
In every time & place ye may know the
Poet’s face: by the Shade or the Shining⁴
Charged by Eternity to themselves at last,
The Poets with the Bare Blade of their minds⁵
A Blind Horse trots up an Icy Ledge: such is a Poet⁶
A Poet reaches out to join Incalculable Holdings, to
Nourish Unconventional Imaginative Possibilities⁷
To be a Poet is to have a Soul so quick to Discern
That no shade of Quality escapes it, and so quick
To Feel, that discernment is a hand Playing with
Finely ordered variety on the chords of Emotion⁸
For such happiness of being a Writer, I am
Ready to endure Poverty, Disappointment,
And the Dislike of all those around me⁹
No Poet writes more than One
Poem, and it takes a Lifetime¹⁰
¹ Emily Dickinson, I Reckon When I Count
² Nicanor Parra tr. Miller Williams, Sentences
³ Paul Celan tr. John Felstiner, Letter to Relatives 1948
⁴ Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Earth and Her Praises
⁵ Stéphanie Mallarmé tr. Richard Wilbur, The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe
⁶ Kosen tr. Stryk & Ikemoto, A Blind Horse Trotting Up an Icy Ledge
⁷ Dana Gioia, Disappearing Ink
⁸ George Eliot, Middlemarch
⁹ Anton Chekhov tr. Constance Garnett, The Sea-Gull
¹⁰ John Berger, From A to X