begins in conflict

A poet's life begins in conflict with the whole of existence.

—Søren Kierkegaard

corner of your eye

Poetry is the kind of thing you have to see from the corner of your eye. You can be too well prepared for poetry. A conscientious interest in it is worse than no interest at all....It's like a very faint star. If you look straight at it you can't see it, but if you look a little to one side it is there.

—William Stafford, Writing the Australian Crawl (U. of Michigan Press, 1978)