"Wordsworth said "the child is father to the man" and that poetry is "emotion recalled in tranquility." I must say that he had something there although I wouldn't exactly put it in those same words. But poetry begins with the ability to recognize that you are feeling and to be able to re-create that feeling, to get in touch with it again. It isn't lost. To emote is not poetry. To emote is absolutely necessary, but that is not poetry. It's vital to recall the emotion that moved you and to see through it to the thrill out of which that emotion grew. Then you begin to make connections. It's the seeing through that enables you to begin making the images that connect with an experience different from yours. The magic that occurs with poetry is the ability to see through emotion."