'Knowledge, Real Lasting Felt Knowledge'

A reader asks why I so often write about poetry but am not a poet myself. “Have you ever written poems?” he asks. “Do you write them secretly and keep them to yourself?” I wrote a lot of it around age sixteen, like many delusional, love-struck teenagers. I’m glad I disposed of that stuff a lifetime ago. I was no Rimbaud. I had a brief relapse about twenty years ago under the cover of “light verse.” It too was embarrassing junk. Like most poets, I have no gift for it. I have always assumed a capacity for writing good verse is almost as rare as first-class musical composition and performance, mathematics and chess. So, why do I so often write about it? Because I admire and learn from language used well, with wit and precision, whether poetry or prose. It gives me pleasure. When I read and then write about, say, John Dryden or J.V. Cunningham, it deepens my enjoyment and, I hope, spurs others to share my pleasure. In his essay “Where Poems Come From,” a review of Stanley Burnshaw’s The…