Joseph Grijalva
Mr. Shakely
Initial Poetic Vision Definition
Most of us are born with the ability to see, but we rarely take time to think about what we are seeing. Poetic vision is the ability to look past the shell of something in order to discover its meaning. Anne Dillard does a good job of explaining poetic vision with her example of the tree containing hundreds of birds. As she walks up to the tree it appears to contain no birds of any kind. As she moves in closer she is startled as about a hundred birds erupt from the tree. This happens twice more, and when all the birds had gone it looked exactly the same as it did before the birds took flight. A person with poetic vision will see the birds in the tree, and if he or she cannot, they will realize that there is even meaning in not seeing the birds at all. You might say that poetic vision is the ability to look into something rather than simply looking at it. In order to experience poetic vision one must be open to all ideas, even those that seem irrational or wrong. With poetic vision a person can find merit in ideas that he or she may disagree with. Poetic vision is also being able to look at something from more than one “angle”. Without poetic vision we can never really realize the full value of a person or thing. To summarize, poetic vision is our ability to find menaing in something, expecially meaning that is not obvious.