Dovina18 Jul 2004

I have crafted poems which have puzzled me in time, became paradoxes and riddles I had not intended. But rather than becoming “convinced of their insignificance . . . or . . . stigmatized by capricious alienation,” I have sometimes reveled in “subtle intricacies [that] emerge incognito from tense silence.” - maybe some of the things in verses 2 and 3. Verse 4 starts to turn this thing around, and verse 5 has the great line, “Thoughts stem from an undertow urge to be the victim.” But rather than nod to the value of the poem’s transformation as it merely sat there, the last verse maintains “a ghostly-grim humorist suffocated by pessimism.” The last three words are pivotal, and I’d like to see them change.