Speculative Poetry

Having just read this marvelous Margaret Atwood interview, I must confess that I've only ever read The Handmaid's Tale and a smattering of her poetry. Yet, I find myself absolutely idolizing her acerbic wit, her congenial interviews, her unflagging curiousity, her soothing Canadian accent. She is definitely one who inspires me to read and write more and more with goals in mind - beyond the aesthetic or emotive - in my Atwood mindset, I find poetry as a means of gathering, grasping, collecting bits of knowledge. I'd like for my poetry to be speculative, because then perhaps I could feel it extending beyond the pretty, beyond a potential balm to some potential reader (who is likely also a poet.) This idea takes the impulse for writing beyond the mystical, makes it something I can steer, not merely something that steers me - though, I warrant, both are necessary impulses. I just like feeling scientific in my endeavors from time to time. It makes me feel like my work is defensible in the real world of money - wages and debts and distances and other things that can be objectively measured. Dangerous to linger too long in this lab coat, however. Best to find myself in two places at once - inward and outward.