from mouth to immortality

A poem finds itself most alive in the mouth, but for immortality it must find a place where it’s written down.

said too much

A mind that rivered ceaselessly to the mouth.

fire-breather

A political poet whose mouth was like a flamethrower: He had the sympathetic audience leaning back in their seats to avoid being singed.

poem place

A good poem dwells in the mouth while making a home in the mind.

my roller coaster

ROLLER COASTER

For half a century
Poetry was the paradise
Of the solemn fool.
Until I came along
And built my roller coaster.

Go up, if you feel like it.
It's not my fault if you come down
Bleeding from your nose and mouth.


by Nicanor Parra, Poems and Antipoems (New Directions, 1966), translated by Miller Williams

[I changed this post because I realized in 2016 I'd posted the same poem, "Young Poets." Not that a good poem, one I've memorized since my youth, shouldn't be posted twice or thrice or a trillion times, but I'm trying not repeat myself. Parra, for me, is one of the unique poets.]

no mouth

Readers:
Roses have no mouth,
So they address your nose with their scent.
The moon has no mouth,
So it speaks to your eyes with its light.
Then with what should a poet speak?

—Oguma Hideo, from “Talk Up a Storm,” Long, Long Autumn Nights: Selected Poems of Oguma Hideo, 1901-1940 (Center for Japanese Studies, The U. of Michigan, 1989)

flavor and texture

To speak the poem would give mouthfuls of pleasure as though eating a fine meal.

word grist

Mouth and tongue, mortar and pestle: Break down the words into syllable and phoneme.

reading with your lips moving

A poem that entered your mind through the eyes, yet instantly caused you to mouth the words.

palpable

You read it to yourself silently, yet you could feel it in the mouth and in the ears.

a poem that travels light

I dream of a poem so brief and memorable, so engaging and spirited, that it will forever elude print—it will travel light from mouth to mind, mind to mouth, without ever being pinned to a page as text.

the tongue refuses to lie still

Reading the poem silently my tongue refused to lie still in my mouth.