Hermit Crab Poems: Finding, Filling, and Fracturing Form

PHILIP METRES

I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that poetry is as much received as it is delivered by the poet. From the Oracle of Delphi to the shaman Maria Sabina, from Coleridge’s Aeolian Harp to Spicer’s radio, poets have been mediums as much as makers, and poems could be as much found as made. Why not think of ourselves as both rappers and DJ’s, throwing rhymes and mixing and remixing, making and remaking? The notion of “found poetry” certainly suffuses modern poetry, not least from Eliot’s cobbling together in “The Waste Land” — “these fragments I have shored against my ruins.” There’s so much language in the world that bends toward poetry. As William Stafford has said, “it is not quite prose that we speak.” Poetry is, at least in…

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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, March/April 2025

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