One hot summer afternoon when I was maybe six years old, I lay in a ditch filled with dry leaves because it offered a world for me. The ditch was in the woods. It was quiet. I fell asleep in my Rip Van Winkle nest. When I woke I heard a crinkling in the leaves and I felt a toad timidly placing his feet on my outstretched arm. He walked along my wrist and disappeared into the further recesses of the ditch. I was sorry he was gone. Funny how I can remember that. At six I felt the departure of a toad as a personal loss. Ridiculous!
When I think about poems I like I generally find there’s a commonality to them–not a sameness, not a theme or subject–but a discordance or disconnect between primary emotion and whatever is wiser. By this I mean sensibility. And also a hint of the illogical that must accompany strong emotion. Here are lines by Yeats I’ve always admired:
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked.
Planet of the Blind 