I think we should all go off into the woods and make art here

The Best New Poets came a few days ago and it is truly a beautiful book. I love books that feel good in the hands, where someone actually took time to listen to the flow. Generally I HATE anthologies b/c the sound is off. The poems seem like bad dates that keep bumping into each other. It is almost painful to watch.

At the big conference last week, the speaker said that a good non profit knows what it is good at, doesn’t try to save the world, recognizes its strength, and identifies weakness.

Of course I relate everything to poetry. Last Saturday I went to a reading where the poet wrote BIG poems about bombs, the holocaust. I began to wonder if it is possible to make a big poem successful. Carolyn Forche’s few lines say more about war than this poor man did in two hours and I wonder if it is b/c she never says anything about war.

I began wondering in this reading, if by trying to be too much we loose the beauty of elements, of what is essential. I thought about the poems I love and why I love them. How I will remember Brigit Pegeen Kelly eyes of a peach until the day I die.