The mirror of the poem

The poet carries a driving idea: a form that vibrates, still without a contour, and that he does not know even though it goes through him. It is not a message you can enter whenever you want. It is inside, and it is not available.

That is the paradox. You cannot reach it directly, and you cannot ignore it. It unsettles. It pushes you to write. The only way to know what is in that corner is to express it. In expressing it, you reach what was already there and that you did not know was there.

The page is not a mirror of what the poet already sees. It is a mirror under construction: it reflects what can be seen only while it is being built. Each word is a splinter. Each line, a curve of the glass.

That is why writing poetry is not representing a knowledge. It is producing a knowledge. The poet does not say what he knows. He knows what he says only when he says it.

Source: the notebook, "The mirror of the poem."