Response How Poems Arrive

How poems arrive is a meta critique on poetry writing. The poet tells of the elusive quality poems and of a readers response to such a poem. When I first read through the poem I felt that the poet was acting similar to a advisor. The poet gives advice and insight onto how satisfying it is to understand a poem. It was almost like a new parent telling you the struggles and rewards of parenthood. Lines like "but poems, butch or feminine, are vain And draw their satisfaction from within," can be seen as a comparison between poems and newborns. Because a newborn can be either male or female and also quiet vain. The title of the poem "How Poems Arrive" can also be interpreted as an illusion to birthing. A poem is written/created but the poet specifically chose to use the word arrive to describe its creation. Similarly child are also described as arriving into the lives of parents despite it being parents who create them. There are other instances with word choice that the poet connects life and poems together such as the usage of words like "pulse" , "els" and "ms". The "els" and "ms" of poems both refer to the rhythms a poem can posses which are quiet similar to the sounds an infant might make. I might be reading too much into this poem but I do believe that whether it was intentional or not the author does subtle compare poems to infants.