"The effects we call 'poetic' occur when speech is made under two conditions: urgency and shortness of time. When the former is 'inspiration' and the latter is 'form', the result is the cultural convention known as 'the poem'." (Don Paterson, The Poem, p. 12)
"Here my use of the word poem parts from the conventions of aesthetic autonomy that have resulted from commodity culture’s limits and heroisms, to propose that the poem is the shapely urgency that emerges in language whenever the subject’s desiring vernacular innovates its receivers. The poem is the speech of citizenship." (Lisa Robertson, "Prosody of the Citizen")
Update (15/7/20): I had originally cropped and arranged these quotations differently, putting Robertson first, and leaving out her departure from "the conventions of aesthetic autonomy". I was emphasising the affinities between the poets as I saw them. I think those affinities are real, but by eliding the tension between them, I think I went too far, distorting Robertson's meaning. The juxtaposition still gives me hope, however.
