Poet's Notebook
Picasso’s Weeping Women*
On April 26, 1937 the German Luftwaffe bombed the Basque city of Guernica in northern Spain at the request of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Reichmarschall Hermann Goering wanted to test his air force and Franco wanted to make an example of the Basques to the rest of...
Accident
A poem is a carefully constructed accident. An experience suddenly comes crashing into a poet’s life unsolicited. Breaking news, news breaking out of the mundane daily world. A shake-up, wake-up call. The poet is obliged to report the accident. It's what poets do,...
Arthur Rimbaud and the Disordered Self
WARNING: Don't Try This At Home “I am lousing myself up as much as I can these days. Why? I want to be a poet, and I am working to make myself a seer: you won’t understand this at all, and I hardly know how to explain it to you. The point is, to arrive at a...
A Reason to Write
I do not write to confirm what I know, I write to uncover what I do not know, can never know. I write to dwell in profound unknowing.
The Poet’s Task
“Poetry is the baby born when language falls madly in love with life.” Charles Olson A grunt, a moan, a syllable, a sound reaching beyond a finger pointing to the moon. Few things are more exciting than the birth of a word. Words have been around for a long time....
Is This Our Predicament?
The only way to save the present is to ruin the future and the only way to save the future is to ruin the present. We need to find a way to make certain this statement is false. Any ideas? Clue! To save the present, we will have to sacrifice the future. To save the...
The House of the Self
“The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.” Czeslaw Milosz Ars Poetica Poets favor complexity. Even apparently simple...
How Sound Is Silence?
Silence takes place in the space between sounds. Without silence, sound would be invisible. When you have nothing to say, wait with calm intensity – words will appear, giving sound to unspeakable silence. It takes a lot of silence to make a poem. Poetry is what...
A Poem is a Storm.
Since my house burned down I now have a better view of the rising moon. Mizuta Masahide A poem is a storm. Lightning strikes. Thunder booms. Wind shakes the house, rattles the windows, blows shingles off the roof. Storm damage may require a response to the...
What Poets Need
Poets don’t need much. As long as they’ve got the world and know how to pay attention to the world’s rich details, they’ve got everything they need. The same is true for everybody else.
Take Down the Confederate Battle Flag
[This website is about poetry. This blog piece isn’t. But I am posting it anyway. It is part of my story and it is relevant to the day, July 9, 2015] These days, with South Carolina on the national mind, I write to celebrate my Carolingian ancestors, Margaret and...
Happy Fourth of July!!!
On this day we celebrate liberty, not as a good idea, but as a way of life. A radical document was signed at the in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The Declaration of Independence was actually ratified by the Continental Congress on July 2 but tweaked into its final...
Definition of Poetry
Poetry - a different language using the same identical words as those used by everyone else..
Carpe Diem
You never know. Things are going along. You get comfortable, used to the way things are. The nasty habit of taking things for granted sets in. Then, out of all that you have happily ignored, an army invades, the body erupts, flames leap through the roof, a thief...
Living a Poetic Life: Confidence in Ignorance
A poet has confidence in his or her own ignorance. What could that possibly mean? A poet is an explorer into language. What potential does language have to reveal? The poet wants to know. The poet's tools for exploration are words. What can words accomplish? The poet...
Conversation
The poet talks. The reader listens, then talks back. Not out loud, of course. Not whispering in the poet’s ear. But if the poet and the poem and the reader each do their work, a response will come. Something will arrive in the reader’s mindful heart, the trembling of...
Weaving a Poem
A poem is the reverse of a loose thread on a sweater. Pull on a loose thread and the sweater unravels. Poets, on the other hand, ravel the seemingly disparate threads of the world together, weaving a red wheelbarrow with white chickens, ice cream with an emperor, a...
technology
The triumph of technology – when the tools dictate the task. The triumph of humanity -- when the task dictates the tools.