Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Engle defines poetry not as a separate “poetic” dialect but as everyday speech intensified—“raised to the nth power.” The metaphor of a living body suggests that a poem’s vitality comes from the fusion of intellect (“ideas” as bones/structure) and feeling (“emotions” as nerves and blood/energy). Yet the whole organism depends on diction: words are the “skin” that both contains and reveals, simultaneously delicate (sensitive to nuance) and tough (able to withstand scrutiny and time). The statement argues for craft: poetry’s power is not mere emotion or abstraction, but the disciplined shaping of both through precise language.