Originality, Of Course, Is What Occurs When

Poetry Does So Many Different Things, It's Difficult To Say Anything Definitive About Its Role, Which Of Course Varies From Culture To Culture. It Can Range From Being Stories Of The Tribe To The Private Lyric, To Being As W.h. Auden Said "the Clear Expression Of Mixed Feelings" To Nonsense Verse.

I Wrote Poetry For Seven Or Eight Years, Maybe Longer, Before I Could Say I Was A Poet. If People Asked, I'd Say I Wrote Poetry; I Wouldn't Go Further. I Was In My Mid- To Late-thirties Before I Felt That I Was A Poet, Which I Think Meant That I Had Begun To Embody My Poems In Some Way. I Wasn't Just A Writer Of Them. Hard To Say What, As A Poet, My Place In The World Is. Some Place Probably Between Recognition And Neglect.

What Feeling Feels Like Over Time. An Attempt To Screw Up What Feeling Feels Like Over Time. Heartbreak And A High C.... The Often Welcome Melodic Lie.... The Soul's Undersong. The Orchestration Of Randomness, A Flirtation With The Boundaries Of Silence And Space.... A Reminder That The Self Wants To Disappear, Be Taken Away From Itself And Returned.

I’ll Always Deny That I Kissed Her. I Was Just Whispering Into Her Mouth.

Connubial Because With Alarming Accuracy She’d Been Identifying Patterns I Was Unaware Of—this Tic, That Tendency, Like The Way I've Mastered The Language Of Intimacy In Order To Conceal How I Felt— I Knew I Was In Danger Of Being Terribly Understood.