We carry the futile hope that by attempting to represent experience, we'll capture what's there, even if it's hidden; that we will somehow be able to render the invisible visible, like the painter who learns the geology of a landscape before he attempts to paint it.

This latent knowledge enters the poem mysteriously and is received by the reader just as mysteriously. Often such "knowledge" feels like memory, the way love often feels like memory; as if the poem ouches the body just where an experience is carried, autonomic, at a depth beyond language, unknown until named. Just as light or certain weather is inseparable from qualities of emotion. Parts of our selves are exposed, and like the latent image on film, develop; silver bromide of knowledge darkening. A poem can give us night vision; getting used to the dark we begin to make things out. The invisible rendered visible; breath on glass.

The poem is poised between knowing and mystery; for who can ever explain the answering of the body to experience?

-- Anne Michaels, "Cleopatra's Love"