Poetry constructs parallel worlds. It makes us stretch, as if we were made of rubber, toward the people it is possible for us to be, toward our possible realities, starting from the matter that forms us, dark and light. We can live there, in a world of eternal possibility and perpetual promise that are equally tangible (as dreams are). And in the very instant we seek to define poetry, pin it down as if it were a simple matter of free will, or as if this were the only guiding energy, everything becomes an option—good or bad, better or worse; then the plurality of meanings hidden in the poetic word is threatened; that word becomes univocal and collapses. 

--Pura López-Colomé

[via MAKE]