The more

The more you regret, the more you erode.

Two or more

One word alone may not be a poem, but two or more words together always are.

If you believe

If you believe in purity you don't believe in poetry.

Good intentions (ChatGPT)

Perhaps the sharpest editorial question is: After reading this poem, what can I see, think, or experience that I couldn't before? If the only answer is I feel more strongly about what I already believed, something important may be missing.

And the irony is that a poem can have an entirely admirable message while offering very little as an artistic experience. Good intentions don't exempt a poem from aesthetic scrutiny.

ChatGPT

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More important than

More important than if you use this or you use that is what you aim to achieve by using them.

The terms

A poem should not always supply the terms of its reconciliation.

Abstractions

Abstractions are softer, gentler, kinder. And generally more honest.

I have been my own (Porchia)

I have been my own disciple and my own master. And I have been a good disciple but a bad master.

Antonio Porchia, Voices

Distraction

Distraction, bane of cognition, is so close to death. And so close to life.

A poem that doesn't think

I would no more read a poem that doesn't think than I would talk to a person who doesn't.

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That strange moment (Balle)

That strange moment when the ground under one's feet falls away and all at once it feels as though all predictability can be suspended, as though an existential red alert has suddenly been triggered, a quiet state of panic which prompts neither flight nor cries for help, and does not call for police, fire brigade or ambulance. It is as if this emergency response mechanism is there on standby at the back of the mind, like an undertone, not normally audible, but kicking in the moment one is confronted with the unpredictability of life, the knowledge that everything can change in an instant, that something which cannot happen and which we absolutely do not expect, is nonetheless a possibility. That time stands still. That gravity is suspended. That the logic of the world and the laws of nature break down. That we are forced to acknowledge that our expectations about the constancy of the world are on shaky ground. There are no guarantees and behind all that we ordinarily regard as certain lie improbable exceptions, sudden cracks and inconceivable breaches of the usual laws.

Solvej Balle, On the Calculation of Volume (Book I)

Anything can be

Anything can be improved with more attention.
Anything can be ruined with more attention.

Relentlessly

Question relentlessly the unexamined certainties.

No more

I would no more read a poem that doesn't think than I would talk to a person who doesn't.

Anything

Anything can be improved with more attention.
Anything can be ruined with more attention.

What happens between

The poet puts things next to one another.
The poem is what happens between them.

Too big

Some failures are too big, require cooperation to achieve.

What it doesn't

The naive looks at what it means. The sophisticated looks at what it doesn't mean.