Poetry has Its Own Epistemology

"The poem always knows so much more than I do." - Marie Howe

I was hearing Marie Howe talk as part of the Collective Trauma Summit 2020 which has done something remarkable - invited poets to be a part of the conversation around trauma and healing. 

Howe said what I had been thinking about earlier this morning, as I drafted and revised a long poem about grief and air. The poem always knows. Although it may take time for the poem's knowing to arrive fully. That is okay. Writing, reading, being with poetry is not about meeting any markers of productivity! It is about the darting silver flicker that inhabits the waters of anti-capitalism: what has not been captured, or - what has been liberated with care and struggle and stubbornness. That which is beyond an estimate.