A Translator's note

Since I never really invested my time into reading poetry before this class, I was quite surprised when I read, "A Translator's Note", on page 9 of The Best American Poetry book, because it did not look like a poem at all. I always imagined poetry as 4 lines with a different amount of stanzas within each poem. However if you take a look at "A Translators Note", you will find nothing of the sort, instead you find what seems to be a short essay. This of course brings up the question, how come poetry does not have a set visual form? In other words, how come poetry does not have to look a certain way. I came to the short conclusion that it depends on the writer. This conclusion is based off the idea that poetry is a self reflection of the writer, so the writer can create his own visual form of his poem. This idea of poems visual form being unique to the writer applies to every poem ever existed. But in a way it also depends on the type of poem being created. If you want a haiku, you only need three lines, if you want a poem to rhyme the last words of each line, then you need to make different lines for each sentence. I guess what I am trying to point out is although poetry is a reflection of the writer, not every poem can be visually represented differently based on what the writer wants. So I guess when writing your poem, you need to figure out how you want your poem to look, do you want it to look like a short essay as represented by "A Translators Note", or do you want each sentence to have it's own unique line. Just something to think about when writing your poem.