You need poetry in your life. Your soul requires that you step out of the banal. Your soul requires that you connect two seeming disparate objects. Metaphor arose from a need. It wasn't the metaphor's need. It was your soul's need. You knew your presentiments of life were not balanced. You knew your view of life was lacking. You knew that poetry speaks more truth than fact, that poetry is not truthfully exaggeration, but that a dim view of life is woefully overstated.

If you could but treat your life as a poem, how wonderful life would be! A poem is what it is. Poems affect you. And with each poem you read, your grasp of life grows. Something has been said, and you have heard it.

Poetry names things for you, so when you read a poem, your heart says: "Oh, yes. This is how it is. This is what I would have said if I had thought of it. The poet has said it for me. He has said it in his own words, but his words are also mine. He is like the diviner of my sense of life on earth."