The idea of a poetry of minimal surface texture, with its complexities hidden at the bottom of the pool, under the bank, a dark old lurking, no fancy flavor, is ancient. It is what is 'haunting' in the best of Scottish-English ballads and is at the heart of the Chinese shi (lyric) aesthetic. Du Fu said, 'The ideas of a poet should be noble and simple.' Zen says, 'Unformed people delight in the gaudy, and in novelty. Cooked people delight in the ordinary.'
—Gary Snyder, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems
Snippets from Tranströmer (Tranströmer)
Deep in the forest there's an unexpected clearing that can be reached only by someone who has lost his way.
***
I'm surrounded by written signs I can't interpret. I'm totally illiterate.
But I've paid what I should and I have receipts for everything.
I've accumulated so many illegible receipts.
Tomas Tranströmer, from The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems
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