There is no poet, outside his poetry. Never. Other voices, other incarnations may exist alongside the poet, in conflict with him, but the poet without his flesh, the flesh of his poetry, does not exist. And so his existence is not real; not composed of biographical facts. Facts are alien to poetry. And what transcends a poem is its own life, one that is new and different and almost without certainty. It is a sign. No biographical information alone can explain the poem’s existence, unless it too is of poetic fact.
