by
three years ago
at sixty-three
after thirty-four years
I stopped teaching
I stopped taking
anti-depressants
stopped drinking
as much
the night terrors
though not stopped
are less frequent
and less frantic
I am not somebody
out of a capra film
nor a famous nobody
listening to frogs sing
I am me— an old man
who still loves lisa
and writes little poems
few people will read
(March 16, 2026)
I re-read Randall Jarrell’s The Bat Poet late this afternoon (It is short, 36 pages so don’t be too impressed). I first read The Bat Poet as part of The Hill Country Writing Project (the precursor to the Heart of Texas Writing Project) in 1987. It is such a lovely book about becoming a writer. Lots of analogies between the narrative of the bat and the stages newbie writer’s go through on their journey to being a poet—1) seeing a world different than your peers; 2) finding a mentor (text); 3) writing your first poems 4) mimicking others’ voices 5) finding your voice in your identity; 6) returning to your community with your vision: a mini-hero’s journey! I love the scene between the bat and the mockingbird (the accomplished poet no one understands) when the bat reads a poem he wrote about the owl to the mockingbird. The mockingbird explains the technical aspects of the poem he liked, befuddling the bat who just wrote the poem like the owl was oblivious to the academic names for what he was doing. The illustrations by Maurice Sendak for the book are a bonus.
(March 5, 2026)
There is a difference he implied
between what you do— (write
your poems), and this book—
which had been published
and which he now held out
(like a capitalist Eucharist)
before him as empirical evidence
of his claim’s veracity; the attention
toward profundity, cannot simply be.
Cannot simply happen. As if
there were no luminescence
inherent in the creative act,
no value to the happenstance.
Yet it does happen,
as we happen. The ineffable silence
fills in what cannot be said—
no matter the credentials, or what
god waits to make the first move.
The writing, the process, the evolution
of the text opens the word into light,
and power, and even glory
as has been done forever and ever.
(December 23, 2025)
“You seem quite normal. Can you tell me? Why
does one want to write a poem?
Because it is there to be written.“
—William Carlos Williams
somewhere
for decades now
it has been there
in this sequence
of unlined sketch books
waiting
unwritten as I write
out of a present
necessity
never knowing the why or how
anxious each moment
it will not
trusting
it will be
(April 10, 2025)
The thing is you won’t live long
anyway
the thing is to see where you are
While you are—
—George Oppen
fool, look out the window
And write
—George Oppen
You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
― Samuel Beckett
I made the mistake of looking at an old “manuscript” from about 15 years ago. I made it about 10-12 pages in before I ran across a couple of lines that I could call good enough to be poetry. There are about 40 more pages to go. I hesitate to go on. I have always over the decades cycled up and down in my opinion of my writing. I know, every writer has doubts. But that does not make it any less depressing when I am plummeting, nor any more justifiable when I am flying high. I remember Robert Frost saying somewhere that he didn’t write experimental poetry, because experimental poem was another name for failed poem. The poem either worked or it did not. If it did, then it was not an experiment; if it failed, then it wasn’t a poem. The old manuscript was not a poem—which was depressing. Instead it was a series of posturing hoping without hope to somehow adhere from one poem/stanza/blither to another without any real attempt on my part beyond “chance” in some misguided belief that John Cage’s ghost would descend to lead me out of the wilderness of my hubris. I take solace in the belief that I knew it was crap, because I put it away and never really looked at it for the last 15 years. I somehow knew without knowing….I am smarter than I let myself be (to use a mantra I said about my students on myself).* My current plan is to plow through the fallow field, and see if there are some living roots that can be salvaged. It will be a trudge. But then, what else would I be doing.
*They are smarter than we let them be.
“way leads onto way”
Robert Frost
I was reading a poem
about how hard it is
to attend to the world
with all its distractions,
and; I lose that poem
to my thoughts of the poem.
Even now, as I write
this poem about losing
the poem I read,
I lose the thoughts
in my head, and the poem
I meant to write instead.
(February 27, 2025)
This morning, I pulled a book of unread Russian poetry
off of the shelf. It was contemporary when I bought it
forty years ago. The Soviet Union still had a few years
left to force its tight ideological voices to sing together.
The poet had been condemned to prison for being
a poet — the audacity! Standing there in front of full
bookshelves, I read a few of her poems. She spoke
of silences, talking through walls at night, friendships,
fear, love, and hope for a future, vague and undetermined.
Outside the light changed, it grew darker and forty years
vanished within the pages of the slim book of poetry
I held in my hands. Beneath the deafening drum beat
demanding one voice, one monomaniacal lie, I heard,
through our fears, a hope begin to scratch at our walls.
(February 4, 2025)
describe something
in terms of something else
say what it is
by saying what it is not
see the world
by looking away
it is
as if it were
like this
nothing
more
(September 29, 2024)
“So,”
the writing teacher asked the class,
“who is the ‘you’
in this poem?”
I knew, of course,
the you was me.
When isn’t it?
But who wants to confess
that
in a grad school
poetry workshop?
Too much insecurity
disguised by arrogance
and pretentious blather
to speak to any truth
in writing. It’s just easier
to shift person, than
to use the all seeing I,
even when cloaked
in irony and unreliability.
No one believes that crap
about the speaker and the poet
anyway. Everyone knows
the truth, but won’t admit it;
because then the expectation
would be for the writer, you,
to explain ad nauseam your poem,
that no one understands,
(Not even you). This unraveling
of the poem tediously happens too often
in poetry workshops. I blame
years of literary analysis
for this phenomenon:
What else does one do,
but explain poetry?
So,
please tell us the vaguely ordinary event
that you turned into vaguely
poetic phrasing
which you are now explaining
in a vaguely ordinary way,
so that we may say
we share the extraordinary
epiphany you experienced
in the most mundane manner
and during the most mundane event
of your extraordinarily mundane day
and that you— truthfully, when
all is said and done, which sorrowfully
will not be done soon enough—
,you did not in reality have.
Are you
as tired of all
this subterfuge
as am I?
You are,
And I am.
(August 6, 2024)
Starting my 44th Notebook in 32 years
I open another, and begin again—
Without an end game in mind
other than to continue writing.
I follow the line as it unfolds
from the pen to the page;
surprising me still, it knows.
(July 16, 2024)
subtext 