It Is Important To Possess

We May Feel Bitterly How Little Our Poems Can Do In The Face Of Seemingly Out-of-control Technological Power And Seemingly Limitless Corporate Greed, Yet It Has Always Been True That Poetry Can Break Isolation, Show Us To Ourselves When We Are Outlawed Or Made Invisible, Remind Us Of Beauty Where No Beauty Seems Possible, Remind Us Of Kinship Where All Is Represented As Separation.

One Of The Great Functions Of Art Is To Help Us Imagine What It Is Like To Be Not Ourselves, What It Is Like To Be Someone Or Something Else, What It Is Like To Live In Another Skin, What It Is Like To Live In Another Body, And In That Sense To Surpass Ourselves, To Go Out Beyond Ourselves.

We Assume That Politicians Are Without Honor. We Read Their Statements Trying To Crack The Code. The Scandals Of Their Politics: Not So Much That Men In High Places Lie, Only That They Do So With Such Indifference, So Endlessly, Still Expecting To Be Believed. We Are Accustomed To The Contempt Inherent In The Political Lie.

Young People Know They Are Being Betrayed By He Mass Electronic Media. It Caricatures Them, Caricatures Others. It Is Not Really About Them Though It Targets Them As Consumers.

I Think My Work Comes Out Of Both An Intense Desire For Connection And What It Means To Feel Isolated. There's Always Going To Be A Kind Of Tidal Movement Back And Forth Between The Two.