As poets, our lesson from
           Whitman and Dickinson is to aspire
           to circumference: an integration
           of ascent and descent. If my
           inclination is to ascend lyrically
           then I should strive to balance
           the poem by descending more
           specifically into the concrete
           details of the poem: to better
           discover my way back into the
           body, into humanity, into the
           effusive real. If I am in descent,
           pulled to the corporeal, expansive
           and inclusive—then my work is
           to ascend, to elevate into the
           numinous, the unknowable.


           From “Voicing the Whole: Poetry’s
           Impulse to Ascend and Descend”