Quit twitter and read a poem

A few months ago, I was talking to a former student about how she teaches poetry to college undergraduates. "Oh, I just ask them what the point of the poem is," she said, as if the answer would be the simplest, most obvious thing in the world, "and then I ask them how the poem makes that point."

Moments like that, when big, complicated ideas find their way into succinct, elegant expression, remind me why I love teaching and why I love poetry.

This most verbally obsessed of art forms never uses two words where one can do, and never lets that one word mean just one thing. The point of poetry is not merely to make points - after all, so do TED talks and university lectures and press conferences. Poems make their points instead in a singularly pointed way, a bit like the mysterious but never purposeless spin of a compass. They deliver messages with uncanny precision, even as those messages remain open to more than one interpretation. Their strategies of concise wordplay are designed to catch our attention and linger in our minds. They reward rereading.