The Pleasure of Getting Lost

Valéry wrote in his “Discourse on Aesthetics:”

      Poets enter the enchanted forest of Language with the express purpose of
      getting lost, getting high on being lost, looking for crossroads of significance,
      unforeseen echoes, stranger encounters; they fear neither detours, nor
      surprises, nor the dark. But the man who comes here excitedly running
      after “truth,” following one single and continuous road...not wanting to lose
      either his way or the road already covered, risks capturing only his own
      shadow. Gigantic sometimes, but still just a shadow. 

To engage with poetry brings a writer into new regions, not necessarily a new landscape but a new attention to possibility, a new consciousness. In time, a good poem will continue to evoke new meanings and, in doing so, refreshes perception and experience with its power.