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.
