Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and literature. In this essay, he explains that “Knowledge” breaks from the common poetic practice of using direct experience to convey thoughts and emotions, managing to be powerful even while filled with abstract concepts.

Throughout the twentieth and now the twenty-first centuries, poets, critics, and teachers have held the position that sensory experience is the standard by which to judge effective poetry. Beginning writers, in search of the techniques that will make it possible for them to communicate effectively with their audiences, are continuously exhorted to “show, don't tell.” Beginning readers, who are not trained in the skills needed to extract meaning from the raw situations presented, end up confused and wishing someone would explain to them the mysteries of a poem that refuses to make clear its point.

This emphasis on physical imagery derives principally from the theoretical scaffold...