When the Numbers Don't Add Up, There's Poetry

The Mythopoeic nature of poetry is not, however, only revealed in the humanization of the inanimate or nonhuman, nor in the attribution of human sympathies to Nature; it is by no means equatable with the poets' frequent apparent belief in the unsatisfactorily termed Pathetic Fallacy. - from Skelton's The Poetic Pattern.

Skelton's thesis appeals to me in the way a justification of errant behavior appeals to the one who owns the behavior. To the one who repeatedly tells me that things do not always make sense, I say: "Let me create my myth to create my sense." To the ones who force a bold-lined boxed around tales and call that box "the One and Only Truth" let me say: "There are a million ways to tell that story." To Lorca who demanded mystery in the world both external and internal, I say: "Yes." To Keats and his Negative Capability, I say "Two and two don't always equal four. We know that, and we will find the other sums."

Now the term and sense of magical realism is adhering to a shell of poetic reason. Now my constant movement toward finding sense, even if that "sense" is the opposite of reason, makes sense.