Once again a child asks me suddenly What is a poem?,
And once again I find myself riffing freely and happily
Without the slightest scholarly expertise or knowledge;
But I am entranced by how poems can hint and suggest
And point toward things deeper than words. A poem is
An owl feather, I say. It’s not the owl—but it intimates
Owlness, see what I mean? You imagine the owl, owls,
Silent flight, razors for fingers, a wriggle of mouse tail
Slurped up right quick like the last strand of angel hair,
A startle of moonlight, a fox watching from the thicket,
All that from a feather. It’s like an owl is in the feather.
A poem is a small thing with all manner of bigger in it.
Poor poems only have a writer in them, but better ones
Have way more in them than the writer knew or knows
About. This poem, for example, amazingly has owls in
It—who knew we’d see a flurry of owls this afternoon?
—Brian Doyle
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
What We’ve Been Reading—January
R. R. Reno A friend was shocked that I had not read Saul Bellow. He sought to…
Architecture for Real People
In this episode, Anselm Audley joins Rusty Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about his essay “Cities…
Give the National Endowment for the Arts Back to the Public
For decades, Americans have become increasingly alienated from the American arts establishment. The main source for their…
