vantage point

Never stoop to slap the popular. Wave to it from above as it passes by.

out past the breakers

An epic poem is oceanic, each line another wave.

[Thinking of Olson. Nod to Homer, of course.]

gathering floodtide

Some poems start with the force of a wave crashing, while with others we must allow the first few lines to slowly build the momentum of the poem, each passing line gathering the weight of more words taken up in the flow.

wave line

The poetic line lifts, rolls and crashes upon reason’s rocks.

wave building

Feel the line build, a wave about to break.

bad general

Like a bad general, the poet kept ordering wave upon wave of his lines against my mind’s redoubt.

carrying wave

It seems a writer has no need for more than one major feeling. Love, or envy, or fear, with deep, multitude ligatures and a good basic complex—he can get along pretty well with that. But he does need one feeling. On this wave he modulates the others and his whole universe. It’s his carrying feeling.

—Henri Michaux, "Observations"