"I dwell in Possibility—" can be read as a valentine to poetry itself. To the speaker, poetry isn't just a passel of pretty words: it's a way for us lowly human beings to reach out and touch the infinite universe around us. Sound high falutin'? Maybe it is. But this poem puts its money were its mouth is and shows us just how powerful poetry can be. If you want to dig deeper into it, we could even say that poem uses poetry itself as a metaphor for the power of the human mind. No matter how our personal lives trap us, our minds have the ability to escape, to imagine other places and to search for higher truths than what's right in front of our noses. In other words, they're all about possibility.
Questions About Art and Culture
- In what ways does the speaker think that poetry is better than prose?
- What is the speaker's attitude toward readers of poetry? How can you tell?
- In which line do you think the speaker best captures the power of poetry to blow our minds? Why do you think so?
Chew on This
The poem says that poetry is better than prose because poetry opens up the limitless power of the human mind.
The speaker is kind of hard on prose in this poem. Prose has the same power to expand our minds; it just doesn't have line breaks.