“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” writes William Wordsworth in his preface to Lyrical Ballads essentially the opening sentence in Romantic literature. He goes on to say that a poet does not see or hear or feel things that others do not see or hear or feel. What makes a person a poet is the ability to recall what she has felt and seen and heard. And to relive it and describe it in such a way that others can then see and feel and hear again what they have already seen and felt and heard and may have missed.
– Robert Benson, from “Dancing on the Head of a Pen”
