Category: Poetry

The particular realm of beauty I seek in my poetry is internal, is a series of linguistic references, even configurations about human tenderness. As a poet (and even as a scholar) I work from my subconscious, one full of an array of images, events, places, faces, and relationships.

Beauty is in design….the curve, the spiral, the spider’s web, the dive of an owl for its prey, the ten thousand symphonies of the stars. It is in poetry, in art, in the creative force that rules the universe.

The mind may define something as beautiful, but it is the body that recognizes it and provides us with the sudden intake of breath, the moment when we look up and see what we’ve always seen in a new way. And if, in that moment, I am granted a perception that I can put into words, then maybe I will be lucky enough to pass it on as a beautiful poem.

In a world rendered inchoate by divisiveness and the limitations of human faculties, the words and images the poet employs connect the reader’s mind and emotions to an experience or object in the flux of the swirling events of life. Poetry grants access and focus for a mind to experience resolution and catharsis of all that besets it on individual and macro levels.

We don’t need to look for beauty in only the obvious places: mountains, vast landscapes, fireworks. One finds beauty in even the smallest of places, in the nuances of a voice, in the wings of insects, in the blue sparks of forget-me-nots. Who would want to leave such a world?