from the PREFACE to the river Beautiful
Poetry is a bright light, illuminating the farthest, most desolate reaches of the soul. Poetry is darker than midnight; a useful mask, opaque and forbidding. I love the dichotomy of poetry, the paradox of it: day and night and shades of twilight rolled up into one. It’s easy to hide the heart behind colorful metaphors and well-turned phrases—even as you disclose the deepest depths of your heart to the world.
Poetry has been such a hiding place for me in the darkest times of my life, and the brightest. The strange pulling of a blank page yearning to be filled, the catharsis of the release of emotions; the indescribable feeling when you read and reread the finished poem and feel the truth captured there, fluttering like a caged bird. It always seems to me as if I am a minor part of the process. I’m just moving the pen.
The transitory nature of poetry is fascinating to me. A poem may glow eternal within the heart of the writer, or it may briefly illuminate a single moment: BANG! and a flash quickly fading to darkness. You never know which.
Words written on a page are never as lasting as words written on a heart. Unless a true connection is formed, a poem is a mist—disappearing as quickly as it appears. At best, understanding someone else’s poetry is an educated guess. At worst, it’s a reckless shot in the dark. Sometimes, however, the heart wins through, the metaphors burst into clarity, and the reader and poet share a moment of true understanding. More than anything else, that is what I am attempting to do here.
Of course, it’s never that easy. Some of the most seemingly revealing poems contain layers upon layers of hidden meaning; some of the most seemingly obscure poems can actually be the most revealing. The most immediate and obvious interpretation can often be incorrect—at least as far as the poet’s original intentions for the poem are concerned. It’s an interesting paradox. The poet desperately seeks understanding, but the very nature of the medium promotes obfuscation. Something tells me that dear old Pascal had it right:
“Poète et non honnête homme. (A poet and not an honest man.)”
The truth is, poetry is always a co-creative process. The poet can never truly know exactly what strange new creations his work will generate within another’s heart and mind—nor should we fall to the conceit that we ever fully will. We simply do not have the frame of reference for complete understanding of any other human being. The wonderful thing about poetry, however, is that complete understanding is not necessary. All the denotations and connotations of the reader’s mind mingle with the poet’s, and something new is born.
I’ve been writing and reading poetry long enough to understand that I really have very little control over this new thing we are creating together. It’s a fascinating thought, and a humbling one: this book is just as much about what you bring to it as the words I have written down. Your triumphs and failures, loves and losses are the colors that fill in my black & white drawings. Rather than be intimidated by this fact, I choose to acknowledge and embrace it. To tell the truth, more than once I’ve written something and stared at it long afterwards, slightly disturbed; wondering just what strange corner of my mind it came from. Some of my poems are that way: looking back even I can no longer tell you exactly what I was thinking when I wrote them. The moment came and went; the words remain.
On the other hand, some poems have become so much a part of me that I just can’t imagine life without them. Brief moments of truth, epiphanies captured, even painful memories of love lost are precious to me.
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They are pictures in an album, snapshots of my life and loved ones. I take them out from time to time and nod, smile, wipe away a few tears, and consider where I have been.
