Some More Words on Poetry

“If you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water”, says Norman Maclean, who was the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago and author of A River Runs Through It. “The water runs over the words…under the rocks are the words”.

 

Like Maclean’s father, I think that’s right. We don’t form poems out of what we see; poetry is already there, an intrinsic part of the cosmos, woven into the fabric of things and linking it together. We just need to be aware of it, to open our eyes to it, to look for it, to see it, and to enjoy it. It is there for everyone to share in. We all have a ‘poetic eye’; we just need to train it on the poetry of things, the essential nature of things, for ‘Within all dwelleth poesie’!