Category: Poetry

The poet’s job is to dig the beauty out, to reconstruct it in language that tastes fine and fresh, to make the world a new place again where beauty is impossibly evident.

I see beauty in language. I love to tinker with words and come up with a phrase that is beautiful because it has resonance. That is, it creates a magic. It’s bigger than just the words. That is a moment of beauty to me. The other way i look for beauty in my work is creating an emotional connection to my reader. I want to know that I have possibly moved the reader in some way. Maybe it’s a sense of knowing what i mean, or being moved.  These two things, the playing with language and the emotional connection are what creates beauty when I write. 

Beauty allows us. It is not a matter of creative maturity, but of sensitivity and wisdom. The alterations dissolve in the daily routine and we enter the state of poetic consciousness that connects the prosaic with the lyrical, the mundane with the symbolic, allowing us to express beauty.

These days when I think of beauty, I think of the children’s picture book I keep by my bedside: Miss Rumphius, written and illustrated by the great Barbara Cooney.  This book is a timeless gem that tells the reader, through story,  one of the most important tasks in this lifetime is to contribute something of beauty to the world. 

Beauty is when you land upright, especially if you are doing something like a figure skating jump.