Two Aphorisms About Poetry

There's kind of a good news/bad news thing about aphorisms.  The fact that someone would write an aphorism, and call it that, and make it public suggests a level of arrogance: "Hey, I'm about to impart some wisdom--uh, pithily."  "Is that so? Well,  I can't wait."

Good news: the pithy part.  It's all over very quickly.

2.. Poetry concerns what most people--for many reasons, some of them excellent--prefer not to think about. Sometimes one of these people reads a poem and afterwards is glad he or she read it and thought about whatever it was the poem concerned.

2.  In one respect, poetry is like petrified wood, for it intrigues not because of what it is but because of what it seems to be.

--Hans Ostrom