Mary Oliver's "a poet's voice"

Also, for the poet as well as anyone else, each day in the private realm is filled with its mundane details, its noise, its flutterings, its passions, amusements, trips to the grocery store, to the amll for socks, to the car wash, to the all game. Such activities however are surface activities--the curl up and the breakage of waves. And poems do not come from that part of the ocean; they come from the dark and heavy and portentous and almost impenetrable depths. this is where the poem erupts and begins to shape itself. It is also the place where the poem matters, where it is read--for this place exists in every human mind whether one is a writer or not. Each one of us, in our lives, opens to this deep place at moments of ceremony, of crisis, of passage, and of transcendence, a moments of terror and at moments of great joy. It is where some understanding of our lives is sought, even if it is not always found.