At the moon jellyfish tank

Poetry starts from nothing.

(Not starting, as previously believed, from the donee, the given.)

Once given nothing, it is the poet's obsession that propels, that makes whatever is destined to be made of the material, for the poem is incapable of completing a thought, much less a sentence by itself.

A poet is someone who specializes in finding a tiny unbreakable thing and polishing it until it becomes full of its own meaninglessness and shines forth.

(This is just language of course, and not a poem.)

The poem takes shape as a bubble being blown from a child's plastic wand, the same bubble being blown from the wand over and over and over until the thing's appearance and disapperance are one and the same.

The poet will take as much time as it takes to make a poem, a poem taking as much time to make as it takes to make a human being.

(To be continued. Many thanks to Michael Hannon, Ben Jackson, Chris Hardwick, and Lea Ann Roddan, all of whom the author talks about such things with.)