Firstly, a poet feels everything. They are like a nerve that is completely exposed. The slightest movement causes a reaction.The sky is not merely blue. It FEELS blue, or grey, or pink or whatever shade the sky might be at a particular moment. The ocean spray inspires a feeling. Relationships teem with feelings. A poet feels these particular feelings so acutely they are almost tangible. It is as though if they could be felt any deeper they might secrete out of the poets skin, like tears or sweat. In my opinion, this is why some people love to either make themselves cry or work out excessively.
But many of these feelings are so fine, so thin and delicate, so one of a kind that they cannot hope to be accurately described by the broad brush words such as happiness, sadness, joy, loneliness, etc. Nor can they all be sweated or cried out of the system. Some of these feelings are so beautiful that the poet is scrambling to capture the feeling before it is forgotten. At other times, grotesque or wounding emotions gnaw away at the poets mind. In either case, the poet feels a deep need to get these feelings into something concrete, to get the feeling outside of themselves. If the poet does not, they may feel haunted by it until the feeling itself is replaced by that haunting itself. This feels similar to knowing a song, but not remembering the tune. In other cases, the poet may feel that they will simply explode if they do not somehow release what they are feeling.
Because the human language is intensely limited, poets have found that by stringing words together, they can capture a rudimentary form of their emotion. Because of the limited nature of human vocabulary, poets have learned that not only the meaning of the words, but the meaning of the words grouped, or the sound of a word (even a made up one), or even the structure of words across a page can help to communicate their feelings more definitively. This is why you will often run across words that are not in existence within a poem, or you may find yourself confused by reading a poem "word for word."
It is not the words themselves, but the feeling and intention behind those words that make it a poem. If one sees a sunset and comments on the color of the sky, that is not a poem. If the same sunset made you feel a particular emotion and you began to write it down, it is a poem. That is why even a child can write a poem, and why many adults cannot. Poetry is another language all to itself.
But speaking this language has a cost. Only a select few people speak it, and I believe that fewer people understand it. Much of real poetry (and there is precious little of it) is the groanings and utterings of souls that don't understand themselves. Church goers might relate this as a sort of "speaking in tongues." The poet's intense yearning to understand the world around them and to be understood at the deepest level makes them prone to intense moods. One minute their brow is all thunder and clouds, the next, they are laughing at their folly. Then all at once they are sad that no one understands them. Then comes the desperate trying to make the world understand. This can also lead to the callous and jaded nature of the "seasoned" poet.
Because poets are so prone to feeling, they learn to quickly quell their feelings in order to avoid pain. They learn to reject before they are rejected, to laugh when they wish to cry, to run and hide before anyone can find them. Without stability, something strong to support them, poets deaden like trees or feel the rush and crash of the cruel waterfall of unending emotion. Of course, we know that poets often try romantic love as the bolster of their life, only to have it dashed out from under them. Some turn to endless circular reasoning to ease the pain of their low points. This is why Buddhism and other Eastern religions are so popular among poets. Others turn to the deadening of the senses through alcohol and drugs so that they are not subject to their feelings. Some use similar methods to feel all the more, thinking that an influx of emotion will feed their inner thirst which they try so hard to quench.
Whatever their methods for coping, whether they are a tender shoot of grass poking their head up for the first time or a frostbitten old oak tree, every poet must admit to himself that he has been searching for an invariable something. A something that will catch and cure him, pursue and understand him, explain the world and yet leave certain mysteries to be explored. He is driven into a sort of madness by this quest. Those who are scientific minded may think this a cruel psychological game fabricated by man's inner need for more, a sort of spiritual greed. They believe if man could only accept that he is an animal he would be forever content.
And yet, any poet can tell you that he has almost glimpsed that something more. They saw it peeking behind the stars. They witnessed it in the glimmer of someone's eyes. They felt it in the stillness of dawn. And that tantalizing Something has almost touched them at one point or another. If the poet could be honest, if he could set aside his predactions and prejudices, if he could become comfortable with the uncomfortable, he might come close to peering into the fierce and gentle, untouchable and intimate, magnificent and minute. This is the cure for the poet's madness; an acceptance of that which he cannot understand, a humble yet adventurous spirit, and most importantly to rest inside the Something, dare I say, the Someone who knows what all his poetry means.
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