Drinker of Ink

by Shannon Castleton

He had been talking about “resonance” (a French word first, I wanted to say)—the way a single poem reverberates with feelings and ideas beyond the writer’s own—across communities, cultures, generations. He says that a poem must serve as a map to a world outside itself—it cannot be just a cute story or lovely images. It must guide readers to what feels like a shared experience. He says a poem can bind both strangers and enemies, like capitalists and communists. It can resist and revolutionize.

I pause between the sentences I write tonight and become lost in the reasons why two people see one another. Why—out of all the people seen in an hour, in a day, in the world—two human beings wish to see more of only each other. To find out where the other came from—their sidewalks, their people, their country. The words they say to describe the other as fascinating or beautiful. The intricate specific ways they speak metaphor.