In the beginning was the Word. Western civilization rests upon those words. And yet there is a lively group of thinkers who believe that in the beginning was the Act. that nothing can precede action—no breath before act, no thought before act, no pervasive love before some kind of act. I believe the poem is an act of the mind. I think it is easier to talk about the end of a poem than it is to talk about its beginning.
but it begins off the page,
it begins in the mind.
Because the poem ends on the page,
The mind acts, the mind wills a poem, often against our own will; somehow this happens, somehow a poem gets written in the middle of a chaotic holiday party that has just run out of ice, and it's your house. An act of the mind. To move, to make happen, to make manifest. Be an act of Congress. A state of real existence rather than possibility.
They love to wonder and explore. Hard lot! But the poem, no matter how full of possibility, has to exist! To conduct oneself, to behave.
Or you can choose to abandon it.