And it was at that age . . . Poetry arrived
in search of me . . . I don't know where
it came from ~ Pablo Neruda
The arrival of poetry is catastrophic. You are seized by indescribable wonder and an equally incomprehensible terror. You face a blank page to write what no one has asked you to write, with very little idea of what you will end up writing. The absence of a commandment marks your freedom. You stray away from the familiar house of grammar, and for the first time feel lured by the forest of language. It is a fearful moment of infinite responsibility. Nicanor Parra's advice to young poets is precisely this: "In poetry everything is permitted. / With only this condition of course, / You have to improve the blank page."
