A poem, it goes without saying, is not a proof, and poetic truth is defined by its remaining essentially true even if it is factually false. Bachmann quotes a line by Simone Weil that “workers need poetry more than bread”—not a bad example. A poetic truth is manifested, and as a speaker remarks in one of Bachmann’s early radio essays: “What is manifested cannot be said; it is mystical . . . Here, logic experiences its limit . . . We stand, think, and speak on this side of these limits.” We live on the border of language, but that border, and the path beyond it, is unclear. A poem, like a compass rose, pivots on an origin; it has its ambit, a clear radius within which it swings, but it points faithfully beyond itself.