News at Eleven: "It's a way to go beyond the surface of things,"

he [Mark Doty] explains by phone from his Chelsea apartment in New York. 'There is the rich and satisfying experience of not just writing, but of thinking and perceiving. A poem is always more than a description. It's not enough to just point to the world, its beauty or its terror. A poem has to move beneath that and make a claim on meaning. We want to look at things and ask, `What do you have to say about that?' The sound of frogs--'What does that mean to you?'''

from Miami Herald: Poet looks below surface to find deeper meaning

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