Collage of Life

Thomas Merton, a monk I admire greatly, said once that most people are like crows, they fill up their nests with shiny things until they cannot sit down anymore. I think that many times poetry is like this, I think that everything is a collage but many times we run towards the shiny, the new, the innovative and we run from the clean and simple. I think that innovation is fine, and needed but sometimes we also need to try to look for textures in things and colors that we would not normally. I have found this to be the case during times in my life when poetically I was not producing anything-- people who I did not expect entered and left my life and provided just enough texture to make a change for me, people like Chris Murray, Joe Ahearn (especially Joe), and Sina Queyras entered and left my life but left seeds that germinated in fertile soil for me poetically. This is the key many times the
poets you think are important are not-- and others bring forth clarity.