So why did I write poetry?

A poetry editor a decade or two ago asked why I write poems, and in response I came up with this:

I’ve been writing poetry and fiction for so long the questions of “how” and even “when” and “where” arise long before any consideration of “why.” That is, the practice quickly turns directly to “just sit down, start keyboarding, and see where it goes.” Even so, my “why” quickly turns to a succession of motivations within an evolving exploration that continued to present itself as poetry. So here are some of my primary Whys along the way:

• Because it sustains expansive dimensions of language and thinking that have been precluded from my employment as a newspaper (and, briefly, social sciences) editor, where expression is intended to convey a single layer of factual presentation.
• Because it allows me to pursue wordplay, surrealism, ambiguity, innuendo, absurdities, but especially my own emotions and experiences that are forbidden in objective third-person writing. (Intentionally or otherwise, my literary endeavors have worked as a reaction against and counterweight to the strictures of professional journalism, the way a pianist might balance classical and jazz or country-western performance.)
• Because it has kept my skills as a headline writer sharp and pliant.
• Because it collects and distills the seemingly random wanderings of my Aquarian mind and my often-obscured impressions and feelings.
• Because it reflects the intuition and clarity that arise in my practice of meditation.
• Because revision, a crucial element of writing poetry, pushes me beyond linear narrative to a more mysterious matrix as I looking between the cracks and broken syntax to admit other voices to appear.
• Because it allows me mythologies for exploring and celebrating places I’ve lived and people I’ve known along the way. (If I’d taken more photos during all those years, would the drive have been lessened?)
• Because it immerses me in a long stream of poets, troubadours, singers, storytellers, mystics, prophets, and shamans before me.
• Because it’s a kind of prayer.
• Because it keeps me looking at the world around me with an awareness of gratitude and wonder.

Well, that’s what I wrote at the time, and the editor fired back with a round of questions I didn’t have time to answer. Way back then. I have no idea how I would answer now. I do hope it would be less ethereal.