Then in my heart a fear Cried out, "A life — why, beautiful, why dead!" <p> It was a mite that held itself most dear, So small I could have drowned i… - Karl Shapiro

I always had this feeling — I’ve heard other Jews say — that when you can’t find any other explanation for Jews, you say, “Well, they are poets.” There are a great many similarities. This is a theme running all through my stuff from the very beginning. The poet is in exile whether he is or he is not. Because of what everybody knows about society’s idea of the artist as a peripheral character and a potential bum. Or troublemaker. Well, the Jews began their career of troublemaking by inventing the God whom Wallace Stevens considers the ultimate poetic idea. And so I always thought of myself as being both in and out of society at the same time. Like the way most artists probably feel in order to survive — you have to at least pretend that you are “seriously” in the world. Or actually perform in it while you know that in your own soul you are not in it at all. You are outside observing it.

Writing, I crushed an insect with my nail And thought nothing at all. A bit of wing Caught my eye then, a gossamer so frail <p> And exquisite, I saw in it a thing That scorned the grossness of the thing I wrote. It hung upon my finger like a sting.

The public has an unusual relationship to the poet: It doesn't even know that he is there.