Patience

I know you're busy, so I'll try to keep this short.

A Buddhist monk once said: "The spiritual journey requires a cup of wisdom, a barrel of love, and an ocean of patience." This is also true about reading poetry. If you have patience the rest will follow. Guaranteed.

Make no mistake. You cannot read poetry like you read a newspaper. You can't read it like you read a novel. You can't even read it the way you would study technical information. 

William Carlos Williams once called poetry "a machine made out of words." Well, what's a machine for? A machine does something, right? Otherwise it's not a  machine. And a machine is only good if it works.

Some machines need electricity to work. These machines will not do anything unless they're plugged in or their batteries are charged. Other machines need a human operator to turn a crank or to pedal or push.

Poetry needs patience in order to work. Patience is to poetry as electricity is to the vacuum cleaner. But what does poetry do when it works? We know what a vacuum cleaner does. But if poetry is a machine, then what kind of machine is it?

Poetry is an imagination machine. Good poetry, given patience, lights up your imagination in some way. It surprises you, tickles you, gives you a nudge, or even awes you. It might reveal a new perspective, dazzle your mind's eye, or broaden your inner vision.