I realized just recently that my remaining poems could be added to works in progress, I began by adding a few poems to the River of Swans and to Wish List today and my plan is to have a kind of poetic conversation with some of the poems in each sequence of work. I hope to do the same with Vandalia as soon as it is finished and my final selection of poems will be Wildflowers, which is a conversation with my earliest Notebook Poems in many respects.
3/27/2025
One of my earliest (and most impactful) memories of poetry is a song titled "The Pasture" by Robert Frost that my Father’s Glee Club at Virginia Tech had recorded onto vinyl and was around my house growing up. I remember the lyrics resonated deeply within my spirit and the hushed voices of the ending were eternal in their resonance. Listening to the song performed again always brings me “the gift of tears”.
The Pasture
2015
I remember discovering Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations around 1994 or so and thinking that those poems were the pinnacle of his artistic expression and perhaps poetry itself in terms of subject matter and beauty. I soon set out to write The River of Swans, Advent (Omega) and much later Vandalia (the continuation of the River of Swans) , which all utilized the (open and suggestive) prose poem form that Rimbaud employs so well throughout Illuminations.
9/19/2024
