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1 " What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks.The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. " I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.''I don't know it.''It's a poem.''I gathered.''I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.'Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence.'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?'I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter?'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?'" Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.' I learned the poem in college and it stuck. "
2 " A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named. "
3 " From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be. "
