what is poetry poetry is inasmuch as life is so is poetry here is the problem life is very big and complex human beings are neither we are small simple beings that do not want to know all of the myriad interactions happening all around us within us as a part of us all the hours of every day we much prefer knowing only that which is just in front of our faces staring us back with a look of utter contempt this is why many people are depressed poetry is an attempt made by some to open up our field of view to maybe check on something else that is not staring us in the face so contemptibly maybe something else is smiling at us we think so we write poetry to force ourselves to look away from the mirror of our existence to see something else this is generally painful to make it less painful poetry compresses reality a lot to make it more consumable it takes life that seawater and boils it down and boils it down until only the salt remains the important parts that we can focus on and make some sense of the senselessness of life poetry is life bouillon and to thoroughly enjoy a poem we must put that bouillon back into the seawater of life and make a delicious soup out of it to make this soup to decompress the poem into an emotion or life requires a lot of brainpower a good reader will have this brainpower a good poem will not require it what this means is a poem should be self-extracting it should be a rare vanilla in the bottle waiting only for someone to open it and sniff it and suddenly there they are in the orchid that vanilla came from in the tropical land where it grew next to its brothers and sister vanilla plants they feel the pain of having their children taken from them a good poem leaves a feeling of loss and of intense beauty the reader does nothing to achieve this they are merely the receptacle of the feeling that the poem forces onto them in a way poetry is a crime but it is the most beautiful crime on this crime-ridden earth