What is a Poem?

"A poem," said William Carlos Williams, "is a complete little universe. It exists separately."

In Imaginations (written in 1923, and edited with introductions by Webster Schott, New Directions Books, 1971), Williams elaborated on this definition: "What I put down of value will have this value: an escape from crude symbolism, the annihilation of strained associations, complicated ritualistic forms designed to separate the work from 'reality' --such as rhyme, meter as meter and not as the essential of the work, one of its words. . . . The work will be in the realm of the imagination as plain as the sky is to a fisherman. . . . The word must be put down for itself, not as a symbol of nature but a part, cognizant of the whole--aware--civilized."

From The Mid-America Poetry Review, Winter 2007-2008

When a poem just isn't coming into being, sometimes what is called for is something completely different. A poetry professor I know admonishes her students to "put in a boat," a tool she learned in her graduate classes. Perhaps this works because of the shock value, as in Bill Cosby's famous "How Long Can You Tread Water" routine. You leave in the morning for work only to find an ark in your neighbor's driveway. It is startling, unexpected, and it certainly makes you stop and think.

--From The Mid-America Poetry Review, Spring 2008