Poetry and Opinion

She may despise him. Her opinion of him may be as accurate as you like. He may be altogether despicable.

He may worship her. His opinion of her may be entirely wrong. She, too, that is, may be despicable.

None of this proves that his perception of her is not poetry.

It is the poet's task, we might say, to keep his expression true to his perceptions, regardless of the conventional opinion he also forms on the basis of those perceptions.

His intelligence and his poetic acumen are not one.

Borges rightly said that our opinions are the most trivial things about us.