a comment I made in about_poetry

[novapsyche]

Poetry is written and read to enlarge the reader's world. I agree with Stephen Dunn when he says in Walking Light, "Poetry should offer us something we can believe about ourselves and the world, or it should offer us something that will provoke or suggest contemplation about ourselves and the world."

I wouldn't necessarily say that poetry imitates life. It certainly draws from it, as its material is reality. I would say that many successful poems try to recreate the motion of life. It is the motion that gives poetry its energy.