What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?
I think poetry (as opposed to short fiction or essays) brings the reader into the moment — whether it’s a walk down city streets or a recollection of childhood. The thing about moments in life is they don’t have a point, they don’t need an arc, they’re simply experienced. So I think poetry offers us this immediacy, and is more akin, in certain ways, to music than to prose. There’s a freedom in getting rid of false endings, whether happy or sad— we do need to end poems, but we don’t end their “story.” (Many of the novelists I most enjoy don’t really have conventional plots, either— I think of Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House in particular.)
Also, the compression of language delivers us lines to savor, they become part of us. My head’s filled with many lines, from Horace to Frost’s “The Master Speed”, they’re just in there, floating around— and if you want to know about me, those lines aren’t a bad place to start. In fact, I’d say they’re one of the best.
I’d add that as a compulsive “word cutter”, poetry’s just fun to write— and far more elastic than other forms.
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