Accuracy:
Can exactitude remain intact
after the poet's eyes and ears
after neural pathways and pen
have spattered it all on paper ?
Surely this forswears the matrix
of correction. Yet if the aim never wavers
if the intended path once taken
is kept, line by line, then it is so
and so much more than just the mot juste.
It flies like an arrow to the target, clearly heard
cutting the airwaves with precision.
Spontaneity
They rarely float to the surface
as dreamers out of sleep
or in a sudden spring of surprise
pop ready-made to consciousness.
And being no automaton, the poet takes
no dictation from a Muse nor outruns thought
in pursuit of purity. Though there is a hunt;
an undercover intent within pretence,
fielding a voice, skilful as breath,
to soft soap structure yet keep the impulse
throbbing .
Mystery
It is not meant to be an obfuscation puzzle
unless poseurs commend polysemy.
But the figurative must always feature
sonorous, alliterative for tongue and ear
a clear grasp of words even before minds
can apprehend, or a running along lines
in time to beats gathered in the womb.
Poetic mastery is mystery, a tracery woven
in intimate and unexpected encounters
as with a unicorn
For Dora’s Poetics prompt “Borrowing Bishop” we are writing to the three qualities that Elizabeth Bishop outlined as poetry she liked best. I have delineated them as a kind of Ars Poetica of ingredients. The title is taken from a line of her poem “Crusoe in England”
PoetryPix 