from The Unsayable Said

Donald Hall, in his essay The Unsayable Said, writes, "Poetry is not talk. It sounds like talk...but poetry is talk altered into art, speech slowed down and attended to, words arranged for the reader who contracts to read them for their whole heft of association and noise...Reading with care, so that a wholeness of language engages a wholeness of reading body and mind, we absorb poetry not with our eyes only nor with our ears at a reading. We read with our mouths that chew on vowel and consonant; we read with our limbed muscles that enact the dance of the poem's rhythm; we read alert to history and the context of words...The poets we honor most are those who--by studious imagination, by continuoous connection to the sensuous body, and by spirit steeped in the practice and learning of language--publish in their work the unsayable said."

(c) Donald Hall, Coffee Canyon Press, 1993
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/laureate_current.html