These words are heavily percussive — do not easily resonate being read silently from a printed page — cry out to be heard, read aloud.
My poetry springs from an oral and spiritual tradition with similarity to jazz/blues music development. Its overt jazz content reveals passions of mine to play stereo as if a musical instrument, and play my words as a percussion instrument. I often explore interpersonal relationships with heavily jazz-inflected meters, imagery, and word choices. Recurring themes in my work: attraction to musicians; an inchoate sense of personal connection with the dead who live on through recorded sound and spirit; the shared air tapped into by deep listening to recorded and live music; distance from and curiosity about masculine energy.
My poetic voice also betrays a collegiate history: BA English and graduate study towards a MA in Linguistics—a technical study of grammar. In college, I evolved an original theory that better poets choose what I call “pivot” words, terms that deliberately encompass ambiguity of either syntax (grammar) or semantics (definitions) or sometimes both. In my poetry, I place these words with intentional multiple meanings to cross thought boundaries that others traverse with surprise-provoking, illogical word combinations.
