is it live or memorex

Even the present tense is recorded and merely played back as though live.

stage over page

In almost all cases hearing a poet read in person will sway me more toward his/her work.

after and late

A poet so prone to the elegiac one wondered had he ever lived.

stay alive

We tell each other stories to help each other live. That’s why I read poetry. I read poetry to stay alive. That’s why I went to poetry in the first place, that’s why I stay with it, that’s why I’ll never leave it. Because poetry alone carries the truth of “is-ness.”

—Marie Howe, BOMB 61, Fall 1997, interview by Victoria Redel.