The problems with poetry begins with a book of it that might be good but you're not sure. You've read it once. You're reading it again. Lying in bed. Winter only a few stanzas away in the night. You're too tired to read the next poem with all the wondering whether the book is good or not. So you open Mark Strand's Man and Camel, a thing of certain and exquisite beauty. So good it solves all problems. You read six poems. Each a gently impossible wave brought to shore by invisible forces, celestial bodies on elliptical paths. Too much wonder. You need to share these poems with someone who would understand enough to simply sigh and smile at finding the divine on these pages, inside these brief poems, between man and camel. But you don't know anyone who reads poetry. Not that way. And even if you did, they'd prefer some other book. Not that Mark Strand stuff, they'd say. You'd tell them how wrong they are, but the camel has spit all over you and the man has climbed up to ride away. A real poet's exit. The kind of poet you see in your sleep, his book of poetry open on your chest rising up and down, as though pulled by some celestial and poetic force, the other book lying next to you filled with questions a mere mortal such as you hopes someday to answer though the poetic part of you knows you never will. Those are the problems with poetry.