ABSTRACT
This keynote speech given at the Second Pearl River International Poetry Conference, Guangzhou, P.R. China, on June 14, 2008, was pitched specifically to a Chinese audience. It examines some principal features of thought and thought-practice in poetry, as distinct from thinking or thoughtfulness or reference to extrinsic systems of thought or ideas, and also from self-expression by the poet. The discussion is highly condensed and thus does not present or examine text-examples; but each stage of the argument is fully documented in footnotes referring to Western and Chinese contexts.
