Billy Collins on Poetry 2

Image by shersteve via FlickrContinuing my recap of the recent Dodge Poetry Festival, in one of the Billy Collins sessions I attended he told an analogy that writing poetry is like an eye chart. You know the eye chart you see in the doctor's office.

It has the big E and lines of other letters in decreasing size.

We can all see the E, the next line, maybe the next, then we start squinting, guessing, there is ambiguity, and uncertainty.

Poetry is like that. You start with something known and move to the unknown.

"Real poetry takes place after prose has exhausted itself."