Why does poetry persist?
Because it does something with language that no other art form does so systematically. I’m with Emily Dickinson on this. The exhilaration of reading a poem and recognising that for a moment vision, feeling, experience, our shared humanity and intelligence all cohere in a language that’s working as hard and as adequately as it can – this is something that’s less and less important to the larger structures of the novel these days, perhaps. The more hurried we are, the more technologically advanced, and the more we ’move on’ from reading to other art forms, the more obviously necessary poetry becomes. How do you know a poem is finished? I would love to know Valerie’s answer to this question! It’s something we never discussed, and my aim with the translations was just to go as far and as well with them as I could and then stop. That’s not too unlike my own way of working as a poet. I revise and revise until something seems to ‘set’ or harden and the poem won’t allow itself to be worked any
