I used to dance and I still make paintings and drawings. I am married to a glassblower, our son is a musician, and our daughter is a visual artist. All these other genres of art have an immediate – and unmediated – effect on those who experience them. Those who are experts will of course think or write about them using critical language, but you do not require special training or a sophisticated vocabulary to respond viscerally to the movement of the human body through space, or to colour and line on a canvas, or to rhythm and melody. Such qualities affect your body directly, before you even have time to think about them. And that somatic experience is translated into feelings before the brain kicks in to analyze them.
It is impossible for poetry to attain a similar immediacy because it is made of words – which are not real things but the representation of real things – but I aspire to such immediacy and therefore try to make my poems as accessible as possible. I work really hard to make my poems appear simple – at least at first reading. The biggest complaint I get about poetry from other people is that it makes them feel stupid. This may well be the result of too many high school teachers asking, “What is the poet trying to say” rather than “What is the poem saying?” That is, poetry is too often taught as a secret language of symbols beyond the reach of ordinary readers. I hate this. I love poetry so much I want everybody to be able to enjoy it and not feel shut out!