Poet's Notebook
To France
Today I am leaving for France, homeland of ancestors, haven of art, house of gastronomy. I have long appreciated how the French refuse to pit logos against eros, rationality against sensuality, spirituality against physicality. The French do not want to pick this...
The Strangest Life
“This is the strangest life I've ever known.” Jim Morrison, The Doors It is life enough. And life, this one and only life, is very strange indeed. To what...
The Seductive Expediency of Guns
Yesterday I sat on my patio in the deep heat of summer, finches at the feeder, deer lying in the cool among trees, a newspaper on my lap. One would have no need to imagine a more delightful day. Yet I am leaden, body, mind, soul weighted down. I read the newspaper. I...
Reading: A Taxonomy of Knowledge
(poem posted on 7/5/16) At first, this poem may appear to be pure nonsense. It may not even look like a poem. It begins with an unfamiliar word taxonomy and looks like a list of unrelated and ridiculous statements. Who in their right mind would think this was a...
Obligation
Do we have an obligation to always be the person people have gotten used to us being, our persona, or can we respond to the urge to be new.
Death & Good Cheer
I’ve received a complaint about Poetry Breaks Things. Too much talk of death, too many poems about dying. Too gloomy. Too morose. Cheer up a bit already, I was told. Be a little more positive. That would be hard to do, since (1) I am positive I am going to die, and...
Birthday Reflections
Today is my birthday. How old, you ask? I was born in 1943. You do the math. Since then, every odd year I get even, every even year I get odd. 2016, an even year, and I am feeling a bit odd. You might think it odd to ponder aging. They say being old isn’t so bad when...
How to Read a Surrealistic Poem
First, remember the source, the unfiltered unconscious. Second, you must want to dig something out of the poem. You must believe that the poem contains ore to be mined. The meaning will not be obvious at first. The poem will appear nonsensical, incomprehensible. You...
Life
Life is learning to dream with your eyes open.
Great Poems
A great poem subtracts everything you know until all that is left is what you do not know.
Beliefs
If you agree with everything you believe you need more challenging beliefs.
The ‘Moment’
You are reading a poem, words, words, word after word, a sequence of meanings. You think you are getting it. Catching on. Not quite. Maybe. Could be. Then - there is a moment. The maze of the poem opens - a clearing. A deer steps out of the forest. A bird...
The Magnitude of Being
Life is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. It strikes me as odd that trillions of molecules, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and many others should have an opinion, should develop an attitude, should scratch an itch, should wake up in the morning...
The Punchline
Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing. T. S. Eliot Words come, an idea, an image, an inspiration. But nothing snaps, nothing crackles, nothing pops. A scene but no story. A story but no revelation. A...
Thanksgiving Shadows
Refugees from the Old World come to the New. They have been persecuted. They have forged a brave escape. Children. Women. Men. Months on the winter sea. The North Atlantic. They rejoice, yet are full of dread. Glad to have solid ground beneath their feet, they do not...
A Meaningful Punch
A poem is a meaningful punch in the mind.
Found in Lost
“The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully.” Wallace Stevens Man Carrying Thing As soon as a reader is convinced he or she knows what the poem is ‘about’ he or she should stop reading. The poem will add nothing fresh to the reader’s life. The poem...
The Stranger: An Interpretation
Modern poetry is not a way of delivering a message, it is delivering an experience. If the message was all that mattered, poetry would be unnecessary. There are simpler straightforward ways to deliver a message. Tweets come to mind. Poetry is the attempt to make...