Originally shared by Mac Vogt

“Love Letter”, pen, 8.5×11″

I thought it was cute. Also, that, a poem might have such a line to it, a love letter written in waveform. But to see it is immediately arresting in a way imagining it can’t. The artist in this case is a hero of imagining, imagining so well as to realize the idea.

The poet can’t do the imagining for you. They lay a blueprint. They lay, at most, concrete sounds. When you come across some really great ideas in poetry, you can’t have the heroic imagination to go so far to realize the idea (unless you are an artist and really make it happen! Lol) the imagination can be sublime in that you feel perhaps close to realization. And then, poets will then tie like five of these ideas, threading through some impossible dimension, and not even the artist could do the poem as a whole justice.

I think, often, I see a metaphor in poetry and think, okay, that’s another metaphor. The idea is good, but for whatever reason, my imagination isn’t activated. I categorize it as yet another poetic image, metaphor, idea, which is unrealizable. I have to really try to push my imagination, and in that, reading poetry is a work out. Working those muscles.

But sometimes too, poetry gives me the power to imagine it. It creates suspense and music and forms in a way to channel and shape imagination. Is that what good poetry is? Possibly, at least, the element of popularity to it. How a poem can take over, I think….

Just some thoughts.?

Source: [https://www.reddit.com/user/lexiamf22]