A good poet looks at the world God has made and taps into the energy already built in. These are hotspots that evoke strong emotional connections for the audience. This is like liquid petroleum trapped underground in the deep rocks. If you know where to drill, you can unleash a vast store of fuel that will drive your poetry forward.  

One especially potent resource is the family. Everyone has a family. This is where people start. This natural relationship shapes our loves, desires, habits, and more. If you think about any great superhero story, the origin of the hero involves a family relationship: Spiderman and Uncle Ben, Superman and Jor-El. The family embodies our values and what we care about. The family gives stories and poetry a concrete setting with names and faces which makes the story  memorable and moving. 

Virgil builds his epic poem on Aeneas and his struggle to care for his father, his son, and his wife. These figures embody key values for Aeneas. His father embodies the memory of the past and what made Troy great. His son embodies the hope for the future and the quest to build something better. His wife embodies his love for his home that was destroyed in the war. These relationships make the story moving to the audience. We know these relationships ourselves: a son with a father and a grandfather, a father with a son, a husband with a wife, a wife and mother, a grandfather with a grandson. 

The epic of The Aeneid is not only about the people of Rome; it is primarily about a family trying to survive a great ruin. These tightly-knit relationships are concrete and moving as we read the poem. Virgil shows us that great poetry reflects on the deep personal relationships we have in our family.