Rodney Jones: Poetic Language and Credibility: The Poem that Does Not Seem to be a Poem (January 2012)

Arguing that the best poems seem “but a moment’s thought,” Jones investigates why we believe poems and how poets establish credibility through both consciously wrought technique and natural evocation of character. Readers want to sense that the voice in a poem is that of a real human being in an ordinary life; Jones examines how poets as dissimilar as Frank Bidart, Robert Creeley, Louise Gluck, and Charles and James Wright work to integrate character and artifice.