Never-To-Be-Fully Understood Poem by gershon hepner

Paradoxically, all poetry depends
on its never-to-be-fully understood
origins that help it to express its ends
with means that prose precisely tried, but never could.

Inspired by an article by Charles Simic (“The High-Wire Artist, NYR, October 22,2009) in which he reviews Nicholas Baker’s novel “The Anthologist”:

We ask ourselves, how could the stiff, dull, and awkward man composing such wildly imaginative poems, or that woman, who made a mess of her life, ever write so calmly and beautifully. The attraction of poems lies precisely in their mysterious and never-to-be-fully understood origins. If they are honest, most poets will admit that they are clueless about how their best poems got written. They live in hope that their work will turn out to be better than anything they could think of and imagine at the time of writing, thanks to the invention of such higher force, and just dumb luck.

10/18/09