Tuesday Morning Cantos Assignment Forum

"You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in."

I think what it means is that while the word choice is a big part of what makes a poem moving, it is what's implied that makes a poem special, and makes the reader relate to the poem. It's like a pregnant silence in the middle of a conversation. More often than not, the most significant things are expressed indirectly through the "holes" and "gaps", than the words themselves.

Let me share a little story. I asked a friend to read my poem "Cycle" . She said what struck her the most was the line "I'm not afraid of my bed anymore." Nowhere in the poem did I say what exactly made me afraid of my bed. It could be because I was traumatized from all the crying I've done on that bed, or I was used to seeing someone else there, or I was scared of being alone. It was like she filled the blank by herself. My friend said that she, too, was afraid of her bed at times because it reminded her of a former lover, of the times they spent there. I think that was what made the line effective. I did not need to say directly what I meant, because the vaguer it was, the more the reader would be able to relate to it.