Just let it slide over you, around you, under you.
Poets slip under my defenses by different means. Some pack a powerful punch, especially at the end…they can turn a phrase in such a way that I find myself somewhat destroyed before my brain has caught up with the meaning of the words. And some just sum up what I’m experiencing so perfectly, I have no choice but to allow them in.
But there are those, like William Carlos Williams, Lawrence, e.e. cummings Neruda…those who slip in on a visceral level. They create work that seems to soak into your skin, make you feel something on a physical level.
So this poem. Hmm. I don’t even know exactly what Williams is really trying to say – and I don’t need to. I just feel something slide over me, around me, slip under my defenses and float along in my bloodstream. That’s a whole lot of power for a poet to have.
–originally posted at Going Public.