Poetry

One turns to poetry for clarity. Though it has its obscurities, it is not laboured over or to be laboured over, like the arguments and counter arguments of philosophy. You take from the poem what the poet found in it, and what was found is passed over unchanged and, to an extent, unnamed. It has an unspoken right to be without having to be right by any other measure than its own. I can’t see why thoughts can’t have the same jurisdiction with the defence of authenticity and naivety against their failure to argue their case.

Just because poems don’t demand so much in the way of stamina and feats of memory, they are a suitable occupation for those who are older and wiser and shorter of breath. Thomas M Disch