style relies

Style relies and rides on a substrate of substance.

measure for measure

Most poems fail based on a simple mixed measurement ratio: the material (subject, idea, story, substance) weighs less than its length in lines.

not poetry itself

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

—Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958), lectures delivered at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, Winter 1955-56.

We have to remember that what we observe is not poetry itself, but poetry exposed to our method of questioning.

stylist on ice

A great stylist must have a substantive substrate. It’s not thin ice upon which she carves those elaborate figures, executes those flawless axels.

no substance but itself

All these poems where it is merely the Poem that is the question—a whole poetry with no other substance than itself! What would we say of a prayer whose object was religion?

—E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, translated by Richard Howard (Arcade Publishing, 1998)