16 November 2020
Some days we think of poetry as a dead antelope and poets as the wolves, hyenas, and coyotes who come to fight over the innards, teeth bared, growling. Some days we think of poetry as the center panel of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights with poets as the naked libertines in small groups that notice only each other, some immersed in a pool balancing apples on their heads, some floating together in a bubble, others riding on the backs of birds. We notice these myriad socialities because we are poets, and because sociality defines who we read and who we listen to and what we think about. But the personal histories and arguments about politics and aesthetics that take up so much of our brain are all irrelevant to the average lay reader.
