If you know much about your work - why you work, how you work, your aims - you are probably not a poet.
Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.
From reading a previous answer, you know that I consider all those aspects to be part of American cultural myth and thus they figure into good American poetry, whether the poet is aware of what he is doing or not.
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality. So poetry becomes a philosophy to guide a man throughout his life.
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.
In each verse, a decision awaits us, and we can't choose to close our eyes and let instinct work on its own. Poetic instinct consists of an alert tension.
More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry.
