The word 'celebrate' implies assembly and comes from the Latin celebrare, "to publish; sing praises of; practice often." This could be the crux of poetry…
Poetry as intercession of the practical and the mythical. Poetry as amazement, intelligent stupidity. Poetry as forgiving the great mistake of life.
Is “poet” becoming more title than role? The question disturbs me. I find it urgently important to celebrate (honor, uplift) those who are willing to risk the poet's vocation…
Levertov's notion of being in touch is a balm upon the solitude of selfhood. How can a community of words show us what it means to be a community of people?
In shape and color we come to exist. With no more than these we can attest to our very deepest ideas and experiences. There certainly is much to worry about: an immortal violence churns…
It feels like we are quick to supplant—however casually, however brutally—all things native. And I am wary of discussing the tragedy, out of a fear that I will somehow perpetuate the disaster.
I remember witnessing two Tibetan monks creating a sand mandala on the floor of a monastery in Tibet. It just so happened that this labor-intensive creation/meditation…
Questions open us to possibility, a vast yet somehow coherent future field. Which slope is the solution to your current, which stone will resolve your sky? In the months and years and ages ahead…
Permit me the following rapture: For the music within the word. For the necessary sound in speech, the fitting sound, the one that carries meaning like a swaddled baby. For the sound in speech…
I have this feeling—and have experienced it, and have witnessed it's unfathomable power in many others—that the poet trusts what is immanently known, what possesses…
I'm trying to talk about the importance of silence, about forgiving ourselves for all the noise we make. Friends afford and ensure one another silence and forgiveness alike…
What is it about artists that empower the wonderers and discoverers in us? It's true that art can obfuscate hope and willingness as easily as it emboldens such things…
Poetry is so important because of the quality of space it activates when it is shared—a deep, sometimes terrifyingly vast field of meanings real, perfect, possible, and indeterminate…
How do you know if you are capable of what you feel — really feel — like doing? I can hear someone saying: "Some people just know." And what that means to me, in this moment…
What is the difference between space and silence, after all? Perhaps it would be helpful to think about the difference between poet and saint, speaker and believer…
The heart, the gut, and the lungs issue specific, ineluctable commands. They have everything to do with where language comes from…
What of a culture in which lines of poetry no longer appear in moments of darkness and despair, joy and passion? Are poets making these lines available?
"Walking among the turnings, one loses track of direction and of the outside world, and thus quiets the mind." Before a recent reading, Indigo and I walked the labyrinth…
Why wouldn't it be valuable to admire and encourage the work of one's friends? What makes competition better than play? What separates the two processes in the first place?