I like to think of this work in terms of Emerson's notion of poetry as 'the science of the real' where real is understood to be grounded in imagination and imagination's unceasing labour in the forms of language. By form I mean ways of putting things together, or stripping them apart, I mean ways of accounting for what weighs upon any one of us, or that poetry tosses up into an imaginary air like so many swans flying out of a magician's depthless black hatso that suddenly, like when the sky all at once turns white or purple or day-glo blue, we breathe more deeply. By form I mean how any one of us interprets what's swirling so often incomprehensibly about us, or the stutter with which he stutter, the warbling tone in which she sing off and on key. Poetry should be at least as interesting as, and a whole lot more unexpected than, television. . . . That means we can't rely only on the tools and forms of the past, even the recent past, but must invent new tools and forms that begin to meet the challenges of the ever-changing present.
Innovation is a response to changing conditions.
It's never a question of better. The details, the particulars, and how they are ordered keep changing and poetry is a way of articulating that. Charles Bernstein, A Poetics , 3-4. Facts in poetry are primarily factitious. Charles Bernstein, A Poetics , 9.