"Poetry is an order where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew."

Sean Heaney, Irish poet

ON POETRY

     I am inspired to write poetry by the freedom it gives me to explore all my temperaments. Poetry gives ma a form that honors my senses and allows me to intuit things beyond their substance. I can celebrate, curse, and morn in the same poem. Poetry loves the vulnerable and the hidden and inexplicably takes loneliness and dignifies it.

     The knowledge that poetry is endlessly adaptive, that it stretches me and my capabilities, further inspires me. Poetry demands and rewards discipline which is a basic part of who I am. Poetry comforts me because it confronts and that is part of my personality also. I enjoy the fact that the poetry I write often surprises me and yes, sometimes even astonishes me.

     Poetry allows me to know language in a sensory way as rhythms, shapes, hues, textures, weights of words. I enjoy the summons poetry extends to reflection and action and the pinch of mortality that magically appears in most poems. I am fascinated that sometimes you and I speak poetry without meaning to and startle ourselves.

     Best of all, I think I cherish the fact that poetry grows in solitude but speaks to crowds. Since I live in a time that scatters people's attention, writing poetry offers me a harbor. While so much of our life is open for public examination and so many of our concerns may be trivialized and disposed of by others, poetry reminds the writer and the reader that we are meant to be free.