The Mouth
A Poetry Q & A with the Id, Ego and Super Ego
A joint effort by EA, E. T. Anderson, and Elizabeth

"For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper; flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth."
-- W.H. Auden, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

Id: What is poetry?
Super Ego: Poetry is a metaphysical object; it is a mouth....

Id: Ooh! I love mouths!
Super Ego: Yes, yes of course you do. Just try to restrain yourself and listen. This is important! Poetry is a mouth that sucks in reality, chews it up, and spits back a little truth. Poetry is not a thing, but an event. It is, on perhaps the most basic level, the event of communication between two minds - the writer and the reader. Therefore a poem, written words on a page, is not the essence of powtry, but a mere history of the event of poetry (the forming of words in the poet's mind) and the promise of a future event (the reading of the poem). A poem on a page in a closed book is no poetry at all.
The communication that is poetry happens no more than twice in the life of a poem: when the poem is written and when it is read. The first and most mystical of these events, the writing of a poem, is in and of itself an act of communication, though much harder to define than the communication between writer and reader. What is communicated to a poet and from whom the communication originates must be left up to the poet to define. Some may call it God, some may call it the Muse, and others may simply see it as the manifestation of an imagination which, to many, is in itself a divine force.
The second act of communication, that of writer to reader, is a bit easier to discern. In this event, the writer's translation of truth into poetry is imbibed by the reader's imagination. The one constant in every event of poetry must be the involvement of the human mind. Poetry is an essentially human occurrence. Without the mind of the poet to translate truth into language, and without the mind of the reader to recieve the translation, poetry would not exist.

Id: Where does poetry live?
Super Ego: While it is an act of the mind, poetry does not exist in the mind. Instead, poetry exists in moments, in motion. In the swift swish of a carpenter's hammer just before it clacks down on a nail, there is poetry. In the pain the shoots up a secretary's wrist every time her little finger stretches up to the "delete" key, there is poetry. Poetry lives in the moments of ordinary lives. Certainly, it could never survive shut-up in the brains of poets. Rather, poetry must go out and seek the world, discover the conditions under which every man and woman struggle for confirmation, affirmation, consideration, and consolation. As poetry observes these things, it filters reality back into the minds of poets.

Ego: How does one become a poet?
Id: You listed. Hard. Then you listen some more. Sometimes, eventually, you hear something. That's when poetry happens. When poetry happens to you, you are a poet and you (forgive the rhyme!) know it.

Ego: Isn't it possible just to be a poet?
Super Ego: No. A poet is only a poet when poetry is happening. One who has experienced the act of writing poetry is a person with experience in poetry.

Id: Why do we have poetry?
Ego: Poetry is a way for human beings, using the limited resources of language, to communicate something beyond language. If "the point" or "the meaning" of poetry could be simply expressed in a few well-chosen words, we would not have need of poetry.

Id: But, really, why? What's the point of poetry?
Super Ego: Poetry expresses emotions beyond sentiment and understanding beyond words. Poetry can pinpoint the exact locations of emotions, wherever they live inside the reader. For example, a well-written poem about the death of a beloved pet can reach to the grief inside a reader, and that grief may be related to a far more traumatic experience. Good poetry can find love, desperation, sorrow, and even humor, no matter how deep inside the reader these things may be buried. Likewise, poetry can communicate the understanding of a metaphysical, spiritual or philosophical truth to a reader who is not schooled in those traditions of thought.

Ego: Why should we be a poet? Won't it be painful?
Super Ego: It may be painful, but it is also necessary. Life is painful, my friend. Existence itself is a painful thing. Communicating with other beings, especially those who are interested in exploring the universe the way we are, is an intensely bolstering experience for the spirit. And recieving praise for having written poetry is certainly something you will enjoy, Ego.

Ego: Why does the world need poetry?
Super Ego: The world needs poetry because poetry connects us with what is most essentially and uniquely human - the ability to experience complex emotions (which separates us from brute animals) and the ability to understand truth beyond language (which separates us from computers). In short, poetry is one of the fastest wats to communicate with the universe.

Id: Okay, but didn't you say something about a mouth?
Super Ego: Of, for God's sake....