As a reader, my imagination is stirred when a poem is written toward the Out There. When a poem is unburdened by the poet’s ego, trauma, diary, and blather, I’m granted possible entry to a peculiar mode of appreciation, of aesthetic impression. If the egoless poem happens to be written by a poet of subtle artistic consciousness, something special occurs: a conjuring of images both equivocal and ecstatic from the half-dreaming world. The world Out There — the stuff of worldly phenomena — takes on an unusual, quivering quality. What had been until the poem merely usual appearance and regular happening is now conjured into a sudden and glowing written thereness.

As a reader, my imagination is further stirred when a poem is written in such a manner that I’m allowed to make deep guesses about the poet. The poet in such poems is almost not there. His or…