So why is POETRY not included in the list above?
Why should poetry not share in the burden of providing Extraordinary Evidence for its claims?
(And can a bus really tell us ?)

Maybe it's because we don't need to test the objective existence or truth-value of poetry
in the same way we do for material or functional claims about the world.
As an analogy, consider poetry as having quantum potential
by being allowed on both sides of that border between
     a) personal consciousness, and the subjectivity of the "eternal I", and
     b) the brain, the wetware, the bio-physical material particulars that give rise to many claims,
        even about the limits of our own consciousness.

So this non-foundationalist claim about poetry is that neither most generally, nor ever particularly,
does anything ever depend upon poetry being true, or not.
Though we might sometimes be lifted up
by the image (or the imaginary)
or flummuxed by some poetic encounter with "improbable unliklihoods"
or frightened to death by the un-dead ...
we don't require that poetry be true or moral
in any of its nuanced specificities,
but only demand that it provide us
with the best overall rendering
of its Extraordinary Claims.

    
Poetry can be accessed in various forms as are the many examples presented below:

        
  1. Introduction to Poetry, by Billy Collins   

    2.     
  2. My Pergatory Years, by Steven Hufsteter and the Quick, 1976.   (classified here as poetry, but almost gets rocking.)    

    3.     
  3. Seven Poets Chosen by John Ashberry, by Dennis Cooper, (1983)    

    4.     
  4. Lost for Words - (Selections from) The Ghost of Authur Rimbaud, by Paul Morley (both pictured below)    

    5.     

        
  5. Two poems: Unification and On The Beach, by Ramon Montaigne (possible nom de plume of Garrison Keillor) ...


    6.     
  6. And these two tasty morsels from Noelle Kocot (from Sunny Wednesday, 2009).
          

        

    7.     
  7. Three poems from light to dark (with a bit of poor gray resolution)


    8.     
  8. "Daddy", a dark closing scream from Sylvia Plath in 1962 ...
        ... (then view the text of the poem here, w/ pictures)

    9.     



    10.     

  10.     

    11.     

  11. Appendix

    12.     



    13.     
  13.    "Song" by Allen Ginsberg ...    

    14.     
  14.     There's Just "Something" About Poets (video)

    15.     



    16.     
  16.     "Green" by Ken Nordine    

    17.     

  17.     

    18.     
  18.     "At the Top of My Voice" by Vladimir Mayakovksy (b.19-Jul 1893, d.14-April-1930), Mayakovsky's poem read by Allen Ginsberg (circa 1987, video)


    19.     



    20.     

  20.     

    21.     
  21.     Jayne Cortez, "She Got He Got" (video)

    22.     
  22.     Anne Waldman reading a Lou Reed poetic letter to Delmore Schwartz (video)

    23.     

  23.     

    24.     
  24. The Secret of My Endurance, by Charles Bukowski ...

    25.     
  25. "Tears" by Allen Ginsberg...   

    26.     
  26.     Leonard Cohen's poem "a kite is a victim" (video)

    27.     
  27.     Bluebird, by Charles Bukowski (video)

    28.     
  28. "Plutonium Ode" by Allen Ginsberg ...   

    29.     
  29.     Evie Shockley - "(a) one-act-play" (video)

    30.     

  30.     

    31.     
  31.    Muhammad Ali - On The Attica Prison Killings (video)

    32.     
  32.     Dear White America, by Danex Smith (video)

    33.     

  33.     

    34.     
  34.     JohnGiorno -"We Got Here Yesterday, We're Here Now, And I Can't Wait To Leave Tomorrow" (video)

    35.     
  35. Terrance Hayes - American Sonnet For My Past and & Assassin


    36.     
  36. Two Fingers of Whisky, by Bernie Taupin (sound: by Randware) ...
         and a professional, musical version here  with Elton John & Jack White

    37.     



    38.     
  38.     Dana Reeve - [Untitled] A Poem of Loss (video)

    39.     

  39.     

    40.     
  40.     Rae Armantrout


    41.     

  41.     

    42.     



    43.     
  43.     Leonard Cohen's "Poen" (video)

    44.     



    45.     



    46.     

  46.     

    47.     



    48.     
  48. Dearly by Margaret Atwood          

    49.     
  49. The Luckiest Guy Alive, by John Cooper Clarke   


    50.     


  50. An Analysis of "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (video)

    51.     



    52.     



    53.     
  53. "The King of May" by Allen Ginsberg ...    

    54.     



    55.     
  55. Yip Harburg reading his poem [Lives of Great Men] ...    

    56.     

  56.     
    * Note: I obtained this poem in Aug 2019, so it is clearly pre-pandemic, but Sonniebo,
    intentionally or not, was also clearly predicting our pandemic future in 2020.

    57.     

  57.     

    58.     
  58. (a German recitation of the following poem) ...


        

    59.     



    60.     


  60. An Analysis of the Emily Dickenson poem (video)

    61.     



    62.     



    63.     
  63. E.E. Cummings - Death is Fine ...
        
  64.     Rae Armantrout


    65.     

  65.     

    66.     



    67.     

  67.     Mikhail Gorbachev reciting this poem in Russian (but excludes the final stanza)

    68.     



    69.     
  69. Alternative Translations from the Epic Poem of Gilgamesh here

    70.     

  70.     

    71.     
  71. A curation of favorite poems here

    72.     
  72. And what if they don't even call it "poetry", the case of Jean Michel Basquiat's Notebooks  here

    73.     

  73.     

    74.     

  74.     


    75. Not itself a poem, but simply --->