Whether or not any of the work I've done as an editor, publisher, interviewer, poet, reviewer has mattered to anyone else, it has mattered to me.

I tend to get tripped up by my false steps, my self-consciousness, self-doubt.  The fact is: failure is part of the practice of any art.

I'm working on my 4th decade as a practicing artist.  You can like or hate what I do, but admit it--I persist.

In anticipation of my reading at Kent State next week (see blogpost just below this one) I've been thinking back through my personal history as a poet.

Where did/does poetry begin for me?  Really I believe it was in puns, jokes, Zen koans, Surrealism,  Gertrude Stein and Wittgenstein.  The recognition that words could have multiple meanings, and that images could vibrate through space and time,  rocked my world.  Repetition, catachresis , parataxis were/are paths I follow to allow the possibility of the opening of worlds I'm writing toward but don't yet know.  And maybe never will.