These phrases, from a poem of mine (here) begin to articulate my understanding of what art, and poetry as a kind of art-in-words, does. Among other things, art mediates the distance between the moment and the eternal. Art represents the macrocosm in the microcosm, bursting like Michelangelo’s Awakening Slave: a moment out of the stone of time.
For me a “good” poem is one that shows itself deeply rooted in both the moment and in all-time. Rooted in any moment, an expression – artistic or otherwise – can only be a model, a partial representation of where and when it first appeared. And, with only about 300 syllables on a page of poetry – often less – a poem is a very very small slice of whatever was in the context of its creation, expression and reception. Somehow, with few words (even an epic is an abbreviation of life and history), I look for and howl to forever, the dreamtime.
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