The poet is the original ambulance chaser.
Not the lawyer.
The term ambulance chaser culturally indicates a lawyer who is looking for somebody that was injured, so they could file a lawsuit, especially if the victim is someone who falls at a Walmart, or any big company that can be sued.
Poets are ambulance chasers too, but on a metaphorical, abstract and much more positive level.
We chase the possibility of death, we pursue the stories and voices of the dead, because even if we are not consciously aware of it, when the possibility of death is present, there too, like Lorca says, you will find the Duende, the dark spirit of art that gives tension and depth to our stories and poems.
We chase dead, and when there is a possibility of death, we run at it like a lawyer chases an ambulance.
It could be a story about someone getting on a plane in Los Gatos, being deported back to Mexico by immigration, and we know where the plane will end up. It could be a poem that creates tension out of simple observation, such, as
That fly contains the possibility of death. So we watch it. We are fascinated.
Obviously, I mean this metaphorically.
Poets travel back and forth between multiple realities, including one of the most basic dualities, the world of the dead and the world of the living.
