what art must do

Like in the lyrics to that Evanescence song (Bring Me to Life), the charge to all artists and poets should be: “Wake me up inside.”

looking out

I’m more interested in poetry that looks out and around and not poetry that looks primarily within.

write this with me

To write a poem that invites the reader into its composition.

room with a view

Nature poetry that seemed to have been written by someone staring out a window.

sure surrender

It is not possible to understand without surrender. As long as the slightest inclination to criticism remains in the consciousness it is hopeless to do justice to what is strange.

Beauty is not intrinsic in any form—it comes to make that form.

To critics: Write of the quick, as you do of the dead, with the same detachment.

Every aesthetic expression is dynamic and therefore involves distortion.

Too much craft in art ruins the art in the craft.

One can live for years with nothing on outside but a few hours with nothing in inside; that applies to art also.

Art never improves, only changes.

—Margaret Preston, Aphorisms (Art in Australia, LTD, 1929)

attica, attica...

Sometimes you work on a poem for so long you feel you’re staring out of a cage.