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+---
+title: Manifesto of poetics
+genre: prose
+
+project:
+    title: Stark raving
+    css: stark
+...
+
+What is a poem?
+I think it was Yeats that called a poem "the best words in the best order," and that isn't an inaccurate description, but I don't think it captures all of what a poem is.
+[Let me start][] with communication.
+
+Communication is a transaction, an exchange between two people or entities, in which one (the Speaker/Writer/Communicator) gives the other (the Reader/Listener/Consumer) a \
+set of ideas / \
+a wireframe organization of a concept / \
+a set of reasons/instructions for action.
+In many kinds of communication, for example speeches, reports, or advertisements, the kind of ideas transacted are generally factual/logical/brain-based in nature.
+In art, these ideas are emotional/heart-based.
+In short, Art is to Emotion as an [Article][] is to Information.
+I think art should strive to transmit the emotion the author feels as efficiently as possible to the reader of that art.
+
+In order to do this, multiple notation systems have been devised.
+Music is the most notable example that comes to mind, as it has the most rigid style, but grammar, as used self-consciously in writing, would be another example.
+Poetry has only a very loose set of rules and assumptions that allow it a sort of notational language, and this is complicated by the fact that when writing poetry, the author writes for a different medium: poetry is meant to be performed aloud.
+This makes the notation system even more important, but again, it's hard to come up with a system that will be read mostly the same by most people.
+
+What I've been trying to do since I began writing is develop a personal notation system, or what I think most would refer to as my "voice" as a poet/writer (I personally don't like the word "poet," as it sounds pretentious to me; I'm aware I should get over this).
+
+However, there were some places that still needed improving from my draft manuscript: most notably, my prose in "Rip Tide of Memory" (now only "Rip Tide") and "AMBER Alert."
+I rewrote each to tighten their syntactic and idea rhythm, to make them move more lightly and gracefully.
+
+The most notable difference in my series is the reordering of poems within it.
+I think that in my first draft, I spent so much time on getting my individual poems tight and polished that I threw them together somewhat haphazardly, using a loose thematic correspondence with the fake "Table of contents."
+With the new order, I hope this has been fixed: the piece consists of six sections, each with three poems (A new one, "Everything stays the same," makes the totals correct).
+Each section has a thematic/emotional/personal element that ties the sections together.
+They are ordered by the order in which I wrote the sestinas at the beginning of each section, which works out to make the series move from identity to memory to a feeling of universal justice, and from there to a discussion of death and (something like) love that culminates in an exploration of the nature of time and cosmology.
+The piece is bookended by the fake "Table of contents" (provided at the end as an ironic commentary on the rest of the text) and an "About the author" section.
+I think it works better this way, and I think the "About the author" at the beginning serves as a fair prelude poem to the piece.
+
+I'm excited to be a writer like I haven't been before.
+
+[Let me start]: prelude.html
+[Article]: README.html#fn1