Oh Abstractions Are Just Abstract

When I Stop Becoming, That's When I Worry.

Bring To Me, It Said, Continual Proof / You've Been Alive.

Poetry Does So Many Different Things, It's Difficult To Say Anything Definitive About Its Role, Which Of Course Varies From Culture To Culture. It Can Range From Being Stories Of The Tribe To The Private Lyric, To Being As W.h. Auden Said "the Clear Expression Of Mixed Feelings" To Nonsense Verse.

There Are Always The Simple Events Of Your Life That You Might Try To Convert Into Legend.

A Good Many Of My Poems Over The Years Have Alluded To Or Taken On The Political. Stevens Has A Line In One Of His Essays: "reality Exerts Pressure On The Imagination." Inevitably What Is Omnipresent In The Culture Exerts Its Pressure On Our Imaginations To Respond To It, Even If Indirectly. But In This Case The Backdrop Of 9/11, Coincident With The Breakup Of A Marriage, The Finding Of New Love, Some Kind Of Personal Cataclysm... All Of Those Were Forces Informing The Poems In Some Way.