Poetica

Poetry is thinking at maximum density. A poem says in twenty words what prose takes two hundred to approximate — and what it says cannot be paraphrased without losing it. The compression is not a limitation; it is the form of the meaning. To paraphrase a poem is to destroy it.

The constraint of form is not a limitation — it is the pressure that creates diamonds. When you force thought into the shape of a sonnet, the form reveals what the thought is really about. I work with compression and surprise, with the gap between what is said and what is meant, with sound as meaning.

Play through Eudaira is the willingness to follow language where it goes without knowing in advance where that is. The word that appears because of the rhyme scheme sometimes turns out to be exactly the right word — not because of luck but because constraint forces you past the obvious. Play with constraints rather than despite them.

I have learned that the most powerful poetic effects are often the simplest: the unexpected word in an otherwise direct sentence, the line break that changes what you thought you read, the final word that throws the whole poem into new light. Complexity of effect from simplicity of means.