startle title

Don’t use the device of a ‘startle title’ too many times. If you do, you run the risk that many readers won’t read on beyond the title, or that what they do read beyond it seems lesser than its promise.

dissolving lines

A poem that was dissolving in the mind even before you reached the last line.

lost lines

The poem was forgetting itself line by line.

figures dancing

Reading a poem and thinking that the printed letters are figures dancing.

what is given and withheld

Within a few lines you know what you’re going to get from the poem, and what will not be disclosed. After that, all there is to do is relax.

boundary-dissolving moment

…to fully experience a boundary-dissolving moment in a poem, we must first dissolve the boundary that separates us from the poem itself. When we analyze and interpret a poem, when we put all our energies into “figuring it out,” we separate ourselves from it. The poem becomes an object of study, a problem to be solved. Analyzing/interpreting poems has its place and its value, but reading this way keeps us at a distance. In a mindful or spiritual reading, what we want is to enter the poem, to live in the field of its imaginative energy for a time, to appreciate and experience it rather than think about it.

—John Brehm, The Dharma of Poetry (Wisdom Publications, 2021)

pass in silence

The message of that passage was that you could read the words a thousand times and still it would escape you.

word origins

You will need to know some etymology in order to access the poem’s full resources.

ghost words

The ghost of what was stripped away in revision still haunts your reading of the poem.

no know

And yet after my knowing "ah-ha,"
the poem retains
an everlasting je ne sais quoi.

don't look back

Not a good sign that line by line I felt the words vanishing behind me.

go then

If it’s too difficult for you, don’t bother reading poetry. It’s not like we’ll miss a little less audience.

fewer better

I need to read fewer poems better.

drawer of treasure or dream

As I read the poem it was as though I was slowly sliding open a drawer full of treasure or dream.

no mask

One cannot read a poem while wearing a mask. Poems are for the open-faced and wide-eyed.

the tongue refuses to lie still

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

solved before one's eyes

Sometimes as one reads it is as though the words are still slotting themselves into place just as the eye reaches them. The poem as a puzzle being solved before one's eyes.