I'm 24 which means I will eventually be 80

Yesterday a man I know responded to an other's explanation of not necessarily desiring a piece of a poem to be understood by the reader by tossing the poem onto a table and saying, "ahhh, the myth of the inscrutable." I laughed.

I have pretty strong feelings about who the reader actually is(n't). I've said this to those close to me but haven't really publicized a clear poetic point to hint at my specific poetic intention. Until now.

No one will ever read any poem you (I) write.

Got it? Ok.

The man pressed the point by reiterating the other's point rhetorically, "You don't want them to understand it?--Then they won't. Simple as that." The "myth of them" is a major concern to me here. Who understands a poem anyway? People can understand a poem any way. Poetry is inherently inscrutable regardless of who is writing it because a poem is not a newspaper.

If a poem is entirely expository is it a poem? Forget definition. I'm saying that this myth of the inscrutable is what makes poetry poetry! Is conveying information the point of writing a poem? I hope not. That position seems like a relative of poet as the keeper of the golden sepulcher.

This brought to mind something an old professor of mine, Dr. Marco Abel, conveyed,

I approach images—cinematic or otherwise—from the idea, articulated by Jean-Luc Godard, that images are first and foremost “just images, not just images.” Images have force and do things, but they do not—at least not primarily—bear or represent meaning. Images work by their constitutive intensities and affects rather than by representing something in a way that may or may not be just(ified). Hence the question to ask about an image is less, “What does it mean?” than “How does it work?” and “What does it do?”

These two questions provide so many more interesting answers than, "what does it mean." I don't think I know anything about anything. I don't have information to convey to you and even if I did I don't think I would use a poem to let you know about it. A poem is a way for me to figure IT out. Things. Ideas. These damn pronouns are all the same! You is actually I when it comes to who is reading a poem.