Understanding Poetry, by Grant Snider

Reference: Understanding Poetry.

I love Grant Snider's work.  He is our modern-day philosopher, who makes me think of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He is clever and deft with words, and isn't a bad cartoonist in the least.

Poetry is an art, there is an art in itself to understand it.  The best way to do so, as Snider does so well, is to view it and experience it as a living thing.  Poetry is about metaphor, so grasping it as though it were a metaphor in its own right - that is, as if it were somebody - is the right way to go.