different kinds of poets

There are poets who make poems and poets who receive and record them.

faithful record

Though he did create texts he resisted being called a ‘creative’ writer—he preferred thinking of himself as making a faithful record of what humankind he’d encountered and those parts of world he’d experienced.

is it live or memorex

Even the present tense is recorded and merely played back as though live.

things seen or heard

He didn’t write poems so much as he faithfully recorded what he saw and heard.

ideal poem

I write or try to write as if convinced that, prior to my attempt, there existed a true text, a sort of Platonic script, which I had been elected to transcribe or record.

—Donald Justice, "Notes of an Outsider," Platonic Scripts (U. of Michigan Press, 1984)

noticed or resistant to notice

Nothing is beneath notice, though some things resist being recorded.

overwritten

Trying to write what should just be recorded faithfully.

off hand

His best ‘writings’ were those things he’d said in conversation and that others had remembered and recorded.

so shall you be judged

This poem will be on your permanent record.

so as to record

Written so as to record; but read for its art.