“At one time I would have said my poetic speakers were personae and disguises, not me. One advantage of age, if you work at it of course, is knowing who you are. I’m too tired for disguises now.”
Continue reading“Sometimes you want to soothe with the music; sometimes you want to disturb with the music. All I can say is I am a Motown baby.” – Patricia Smith
Continue reading“In a poem, if you can flex the music, line, and form enough, no matter what has happened, or what continues to happen even in a pained world, anything might still be possible, accompanied by the right song. That’s freedom.”
Continue reading“Even if you are a writer who simply thinks of literature as an escape, you cannot control how your reader approaches it, and the interaction between writer and reader is a core part of the process. Otherwise you are just writing a journal for yourself. Whatever is happening in the world is always going to influence how people to respond to art.”
Continue reading“I was drawn to poetry as soon as I learned to read. I’d describe it as simply an attraction, though that in itself could also be said to be inexplicable, metaphysical, ontological, fated, fatal (not to be dramatic or anything—good movie though).”
Continue reading“Suddenly, it seemed possible to become a composer myself, creating in a medium I’d always loved: language.”
Continue reading“I have also become habituated, daily, to writing newer, stranger, and hopefully more truthful and revelatory things, which has its own, gentler, less urgent but nonetheless compelling edge.”
Continue reading“As we study an art form or professionalize ourselves as artists, we forsake some of the play, the risk. I can get closer to that initial wildness in my notebook, a big unlined artist’s sketchbook.”
Continue reading“When something shows up, I try to get out of the way and let it become the clearest expression of itself. It should feel like a sudden occurrence on the page.”
Continue reading“Never quite knowing what to say or make of being alive on earth compels much of my writing toward how to be here as I flail through being here. I have a deep admiration and commitment for practicing how to be a part of the ‘flux’ of things.”
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