Look at Beautiful Things, Answering the Unanswerable

As a poet, the first instinct would be to put a “To” in the title, “To Look at Beautiful Things,” putting poetic distance between writer and reader, poet and human being. Semantics at their best bring the world closer, at their most subtle, separate us from the world, from our own experiences, from others. So to leave it as just, look at beautiful things places it in the present, allows it to be active instead of intellectual. This, in itself, is beautiful. The details in poems are rarely of perfection, instead of rattling, gorgeous, terrible imperfection. The loveliness of imperfection is a story worth telling. The real work of poetry is to remain immediate. Of all these bright constructions – the brightest is the most rusted, the most broken open. There are so many answers to impossible questions, all of them falling short of the magnitude needed to give meaning to life. The bearing of emotion and experience and time is what opens and astounds. The bearing is beautiful. Read More...