I have finally begun my Herodiade. With terror, for I am inventing a language that must necessarily burst forth from a very new poetics, that could be defined in a couple of words: Paint, not the thing, but the effect it produces. … the line of poetry in such a case should be composed not of words, but of intentions, and all the words should fade away before the sensation..'''

What's exciting about the poems is that by destroying writing you can create new writing.

Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.

When you write a poem, you discover that the very necessity of fitting your meaning into such and such a form requires you to search in your imagination for new meanings. You reject certain ways of saying it; you select others, always trying to form the poem again. In your forming, you arrive at new and more profound meanings than you had even dreamed of. Form is not a mere lopping off of meaning that you don't have room to put into your poem; it is an aid to finding new meaning, a stimulus to condensing your meaning, to simplifying and purifying it, and to discovering on a more universal dimension the essence you wish to express.

[Poetry] strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bear the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms.

There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,
And wake from ignorance the Western World.

What is new poetry? The difference is not mere details of form, measure rhyme schemes or diction, but a return to contemporary speech, thought, imagination and spiritual life, coupled with oriental (Japan & China) and cosmopolitan influences ,and a direction of vision, with perfection of form and delicacy of feeling.

That’s how I found out, again through experience, that poetry is not Play-Doh. You can’t take a poem and keep re-forming it. It is itself, and you have to know how to cut it, and if there’s something else you want to say, that’s fine.