I'm Major Jackson and this is the Slowdown.

People ask all the time, what is writing poetry like?

I say, for me, writing poetry is like donning special sunglasses.

As though one more suddenly cast in a classic, grainy, black and white film, writing shotgun

in a convertible that travels along a countryside, in which the cameraman precariously lodged

on the side of a mountain, suddenly pans and closes to one's laughter.

A mouth, traveling at 30 miles an hour, while a minimalist soundtrack provides texture

and mystery.

No, writing poetry is less performative in its enactment of its special powers of vision.

Though most often, its form of seeing occurs at the level of metaphor.

If itself understood by understanding something else, what you see becomes your muse.

Writing poetry is chiefly a search for language that makes a tidy explanation of both the present

and the past, with the hope our mind grabs on so that the poem emerges also as a visceral

experience of thinking.

That is, thinking as an unfolding and awakening, both for the author and the reader, or in

this instance, a listener.

But then occasionally, writing poetry is also an offering to the future, poem as a container

of time, whose language signifies the era in which it was written.

Take, for example, let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against

the sky.

Thank you, Mr. Elliott, for a wee slice of the early 20th century.

The poem can be read as a report of the author's thinking and feelings filed away for future

...