sparsely furnished

For my living space all I require for furnishings are a bed and a bookcase.

mind to matter

The poem lives in the mind as aspiration, and resides on the page as a compromise.

different reading

Reading a play is another kind of reading.

narrative explained

A narrative poem carries a story however unconventionally it’s told.

aide-memoire

Forty years later Jonathan Swift wrote, in his Advice to a Young Poet, that ‘a commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without’, for ‘poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories’.

—Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (Biblioasis, 2024)

odd entries

Search engines have made them obsolete and yet I have trouble letting go of my collection of reference books. From my reference books what I miss now are those odd entries catching my eye as I went paging through them toward whatever it was I was hunting for.

you can get there

If you really know the end of the poem, then you can get there.

way leads on to way

There are books you mean to read but never get to, and those you read and mean to reread but never do, and so it goes like Frost’s famous lines, “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.”

she brushed your brow

A line like a mother’s hand passed over your brow.

be a picker

Poet, be a picker. Find the worth in what others throw away

adjectives arise

Start a review of a book of poems by listing all the adjectives that come to mind while reading the book.

lack of urban planning

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein associated language with "an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses."

seen for what it is

To be acknowledged and accepted, not only must the work of art be created, but it must be seen (experienced); and seen through the correct cultural lens.

runes and ruins

A notebook of runes, ruins.

lowered into the depths

Lines like a trawler's nets lowered into the depths of the psyche—no telling what they’ll dredge up.

top down

Your title is cliché…it’s all going downhill from there.

never expedient

Poetry as exposition that eschews expediency.

aesthetic cage

Don’t forget that one’s aesthetic can be one’s cage.

captains courageous

The courage of good criticism.

thirty years

Today we held a thirtieth anniversary reading of the poets who have met at my house since early 1995. I told someone after the reading, how much I valued the 'soft deadline' of having to press an inchoate poem into in a presentable state before the weekly meeting.