I am an admirer of the poet David Whyte. Even when David speaks about poetry, it is poetry. Listen to some of the ways he describes the art of the poem:

• remembering and discovering at the same time
• a conversation between the tangible and the untouchable
• the language for living on the the frontier of life
• overhearing yourself saying things you didn't know you knew
• granting magnificence to the most difficult circumstances
• articulating the reality of any given step, so you are free to take the next
• seeing experience as revelation
• simultaneous violation and validation

This is why I love poetry, both reading it and writing it. A good poem is life distilled to its essence, an encapsulation of universal experience, a link that binds us, a window into the soul.

Text and image © 2011 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.