Poetry is the meeting point of parallel lines—in infinity, but also in the here and now. It is where the patent and incontrovertible intersects with the ineffable and incommensurable. It can be as complicated as Mallarmé or Paul Celan, or as simple as Heine or Verlaine, but something about it, however strongly it is felt, surpasses comprehension. It is what, when thought of, made A. E. Housman’s face bristle, and his razor inoperative; it is what made Emily Dickinson’s whole body so cold no fire could ever warm her.

There is a wonderful story I. A. Richards used to tell that I remember only imperfectly. It seems that word got back to the University of Chicago that young David Oppenheimer, who had been given a grant to pursue his scientific studies in—Vienna, was it?—was writing poetry instead. So a great scientist, his mentor (I forget his name, alas), was deputized to restore him to his senses. Poetry or science, the disciple remonstrated, it’s really all the same. Not so, rejoined the master: science is saying in language that everyone can understand things nobody knew before; poetry is saying what everyone knew all along in language that nobody can understand. At this point, Ivor Richards would draw himself up and sound and look even more vatic than usual, and declaim: “He was absolutely right: poetry is saying something everyone always knew in language that passes all understanding.”

The great modern poets, starting with Rimbaud and Mallarmé, were striving