to make of or to listen to

Poets who are not so much makers as they are listeners.

to incite a caring

One can say anything to language. This is why it is a listener, closer to us than any silence or any god. Yet its very openness often signifies indifference. (The indifference of language is continually solicited and employed in bulletins, legal records, communiqués, files.) Poetry addresses language in such a way as to close this indifference and to incite a caring.

—John Berger, “The Hour of Poetry,” Selected Essays (Vintage, 2001)

three-minute format

Whether due to the limits of the attention span or listener fatigue, there is a reason that the three-minute pop song format remains prevalent; and, similarly, there is a reason most poems should stay within a single-page length: If the poem has a subject, then one can expect a capable poet to properly address or do justice to most subjects within a page. If the poem has no subject, then the poet’s pushing beyond that length will require felicities of sound, intriguing phrase-making, and compelling image-making to hold reader’s attention. But even at very high level, without the hold of narrative or theme or the complexities of a subject, inattention is bound to set in. And the mind will wander so far as not to be reading anymore.