One problem with [defining poetry] is ourselves: we keep getting in the way, obstructing the viewfinder with all these stray edges of selves. We cannot read without putting ourselves into the text, nor speak without letting loose a flood of idiosyncracies. So how should we ever find what poetry is, when we cannot stabilize our own vantage point …? (p. 355)

One answer is fairly simple. Perhaps when poetry is working at its best, it is simply drawing upon the world we live, in order to see and speak of the world we have…. This may even be the most positive answer for poetry, because it strives to work on established ground—the "given" of the realm that we are born to—and strives to make our participation in that realm somehow fuller and more aware…. But, whatever else it is, this life-connected choice is the choice taken by the...