By Robert Crawford Cosmopolibackofbeyondism is a creed with a wink in it. At the same time, verse is a marginal act, operating way out at the back of beyond, at the limits of what can be said. Its centrality and marginality are bonded.
Every poem is an island.
To get to a poem requires sailing out from the mainland of routine language. A poem is defined by the rugged shore of its right-hand margin, cutting it off from prose. Some of the ancients likened verse to the movement of oxen as they ploughed a furrow, then wheeled round to plough the next. In this sense every maker of verse is a ploughman poet, breaking open a field of silence. On its little journey, each verse line leads silence into sound, sound into silence.