Have a Heart

To have the heart of a poet is to be open to the depth and breadth of experience,

which comes to us unbidden. That experience, for the poetic heart, shows forth,

manifests another, deeper experience, which calls out to be re-presented in language,

in imagery, metaphor, form. Thus the heart of the poet extracts the heart of experience

and expresses it anew in a different mode: poetic language. That type of heart

can never be too big, too sensitive, too full.