Robin Hirsch: I would be hard pressed to call myself a poet. I commit verse rather than poetry. However, I was trained in pretty rigorous schools in England, where the study of literature enables you to take it apart rather than put something creative together, i.e., you're more likely to become a critic than a writer.
So, it took me years to find a voice as a writer (there are always those demons in your head, saying "So-and-so--George Herbert, John Keats, Dylan Thomas --- would (or wouldn't) have done such-and-such." Etc., etc. I never dreamed of finding a voice as a poet --- my metier is memoir. But with the inspiration of my kids, I started to write verse, most of it playful and very light, but occasionally with an oblique approach to something not totally without meaning.
Poetry (other people's) has such resonance because it is at its best deeply thought, deeply felt, and brilliantly expressed. It can be short and lyric, or massive and epic. It can contain (as Whitman did) multitudes. It can distill the most complex nuances of one's inarticulate inner life in a way that takes psychologists years of study and practice to approach. Hamlet (I think) says, "Oh, I could be bounded in a nutshell / And feel myself a king of infinite space..." Exactly. He also says "were it not that I have bad dreams." Exactly, exactly.
Marilyn Singer: I've loved poetry since I was a little kid. It was the first thing I wrote. I think what I loved then and now is the sound, the rhythm, the musicality of poems. Poetry is about words --- their precision, texture, beauty (and ugliness). Prose is about words, too, but not in the same way. Prose is about the bigger picture. The canvas is bigger and so are the brushstrokes. Poetry, to me, is more about capturing specific moments, whether or not it is narrated by a character or by the poet her/himself. It may also ask philosophical questions. In its condensed form, poetry gives these questions an immediacy, a great power to startle and grab the imagination. Poetry is great for asking those questions that come to you just as you're falling asleep.
Paul B. Janeczko: It's not so much what you can say as it is how you can say it. That's the grabber in poetry. It's the word play. The form. The music. The economy.
Betsy Franco: I think in an economical way; therefore, poetry is the perfect form for me. In my picture books, I need a beginning, middle and end, and there's a structure I have to follow. In poetry, I can custom-make a structure that fits the idea or feeling I'm trying to get across. Often the things I want to write about are best expressed in a short piece-there's not enough there for a whole story.
Mary Ann Hoberman: Poetry is both heightened and condensed language. It restores the luster of words that have been dulled and made hackneyed by use and time. It reaches us in places usually untouchable by prose. To my mind every word is a diamond: many-faceted and multilayered. Reclaimed by the poem, it is set free, able to reveal its multiple meanings and connotations. Poetry is liberated language, returned to its origins.
X. J. Kennedy: This question assumes that a writer starts with something to say, and chooses a means of saying it. But, as E. M. Forster once remarked, "How do I know what I have to say until I see what I've said?" This is particularly the case when you write a poem. Often you start without an idea in your head --- with just a vague but powerful feeling --- and you find words that, with any luck, make the reader feel similarly.
Sonya Sones: I write poetry because I have to. Poetry is such a great way to get at the center and truth of things. It's the only way I can say what I need to say. I take exquisite pleasure in finding the words, not just any words, but the exact right words, to describe a certain feeling or a moment in time. Besides, I've tried writing prose, and it isn't nearly as much fun --- it gives me the uncomfortable sensation of having too much freedom. What can I say in poetry that I can't say as well in prose? Everything!
Alan Katz: To tell you the truth, I grew up afraid of poetry. I considered it the literary equivalent of green vegetables. I always thought everyone but me "got it." Then I married a published poet, went to her readings, and was sure of it. In Take Me Out of the Bathtub, I wrote the lines to be sung to the tune of popular songs. The book is sold in bookshop poetry sections. So I'm a poet. And I'm glad to say it doesn't hurt one bit.
