The House of Poetry

Jonah Winter

I believe that one should respect and rise to the occasion of the space one inhabits, allowing it all holiness which is its due, and allowing the space to determine, even, the nature and course of one's behavior.  Thus, if one is in a church, a meditative, quiet regard towards the things of this world, or the next, shall assume the shape of the self, freeing the self from the need of deciding or imposing a pre-determined set of qualities upon the church.  The self becomes the church, emptied of its clergy, ready to be filled by the spirit of Something that is real, to be filled by the same something which makes the church the church, to become, in other words, a part of the church.  As with the church, the poem should inspire a similar behavior.  Emptied, one enters the poem without agenda, except for the focus necessary in the depositing of one's worldly, unpoemly, goods at the door of the poem.  What is required is a sense of the poem's peculiar demands.  This sense is attained through quiet and through listening, not listening to the random voices wreaking chaos on the mind, but listening to the one voice so clear it has to be a poem.  This is how one respects and thus inhabits the house of poetry.

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