For the beginning is assuredly
          the end—since we know nothing, pure
          and simple, beyond
          our own complexities….

This quotation from [William Carlos Williams's] Paterson suggests one of the basic themes of Jack Spicer's poem "Billy The Kid"—that a poem is the working out of its possibilities. It implicitly suggests that the significance of a poem does not lie in its meaning, as that term is traditionally understood, but rather that the significance of the poem lies in its act of self-creation. This proposition rests on the assertion that a poem is a form of experience in which the moral dimension of life finds its expression in the act of creation, and in no other place. Thus the proper concern of the poet and, consequently, the poem is with poetry itself. And, if, as Williams apparently understood, "the beginning is assuredly / the end" and our knowledge of...