I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple — or a green field — a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing — an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness –wonderful as that part of it is. I learned that the poem was made not just to exist, but to speak –to be company. It was everything that was needed, when everything was needed.
Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays
