Poet Jane Hirshfield said "... the feeling I have about poem-writing (is) that it is always an exploration, of discovering something I didn't already know. Who I am shifts from moment to moment, year to year. What I can perceive does as well. A new poem peers into mystery, into whatever lies just beyond the edge of knowable ground."
I bring a different poem to the writing classes each week, not only to inspire but to introduce new poets to the group members.
The Emptiness of Man by Joao Cabral De Melo Neto
I. The emptiness of man is not like any other: not like an empty coat or empty sack (things which do not stand up when empty, such as an empty man), the emptiness of man is more like fullness in swollen things which keep on swelling, the way a sack must feel that is being filled, or any sack at all. The emptiness of man, this full emptiness, is not like a sack of bricks' emptiness, or a sack of rivets', it does not have the pulse that beats in a seed bag or bag of eggs. 2. The emptiness of man, though it resembles fullness, and seems all of a piece, actually is made of nothings, bits of emptiness, like the sponge, empty when filled, swollen like the sponge, with air, with empty air; it has copied its very structure from the sponge, it is made up in clusters, of bubbles, of non-grapes. Man's empty fullness is like a sack filled with sponges, is filled with emptiness: man's emptiness, or swollen emptiness, or the emptiness that swells by being empty. ~ from The Poetry of Our World (HarperCollins 2000) translated from the Portuguese by Galway Kinnell