to build a fire

I have many poetry books. If times get tough, I can burn them for heat.

not human

Poetry’s feelings are not human feelings; we know the difference. There is some deep exchange of heat for cool that I’m trying to get at, something that I see operating in nonsense and that I believe gives poetry much of its secret irresistibility and staying power (we are not exhausted by it and must always revisit it).

—Kay Ryan, “A Consideration of Poetry,” Synthesizing Gravity (Grove Press, 2020)

[I don't believe this a bit. But I must acknowledge other views re poetry.]

fanning themselves

It was warm in the café, and the poets waiting for their turn to read were fanning themselves with their thin volumes.

lithic in their singleness

There are certain poems I have long thought of as “pebbles”: small, a little intractable, lithic in their singleness of perception. Like an actual pebble, cold until warmed by an exterior heat source; like an actual pebble, unwavering in outlook and replete in simple thusness. The conception of this term, I’m sure, bows more than a little in the direction of Zbigniew Herbert’s famous poem; but I recognized the type long before reading his “Pebble”…

—Jane Hirshfield, “Skipping Stones,” Circumference is My Business: Poets on Influence and Mastery (Paul Dry Books, 2001), edited by Stephen Berg.