Okay, we know it's the Empress's opinion from its context, so I don't require a "for me." I even agree with it more than I disagree with it. What irks me about it, however, is its either/or solipsism: the Empress likes poems for what they say to her feelings, and not as puzzles to analyze, as the teacher she wrote about in her letter presented them. Therefore, poems are by definition communications of feeling for everyone.

It amazes me how many people think poems have only one valid use. I think their best use is to celebrate existence, but I also think them wonderful objects for dissection, and for psychological or historical or linguistic investigation (except that linguistic investigation, for me, is psychological investigation). I don't like poems as political treatises--because they can't remain in celebrature if they specialize in politics. My main point, though, is that people who want to feel seem to feel that the desires of people who want to analyze should be ignored. Vice versa, no doubt.

To finish off the entry, here's something else I found in my mailbox today, a poem by Geof Huth: "moon/ over/ night/ under/ space/ beyond/ thought." Those are its words, but it's drawn in a just-right calligraphy with the n of "moon" joining the o of "over" and the g of "night" running into the p of "space," which joins the b of "beyond," whose y drops onto the g of thought. A gem. But I wanna revise it by changing "beyond" to "becoming." Not to improve it, just to take it to an equal or even lesser but interesting elsewhere.