--I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmic creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste.

Edgar Allan Poe
from The Poetic Principle


--Genuine Poetry can communicate before it is understood.

T. S. Eliot

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.
T. S. Eliot

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.
T. S. Eliot

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.
T. S. Eliot

April is the cruellest month.
T. S. Eliot

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.
T. S. Eliot

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
T. S. Eliot

It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.
T. S. Eliot


Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot


Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
T. S. Eliot

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
T. S. Eliot
TS Eliot



The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. Eliot


The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.
T. S. Eliot

What Stars Brought in October

Tuscan stars in a dark season. October
sky as death veilings; a shimmer-water
cobalt-blue in a dark season. By almond

saplings, leaves as rinds, a bevy of
jeterusy flowers.

- in progress

In Brine, Beneath Delos

In Brine, Beneath Delos,

Poseydon praised each mackerel with
A silvery line across mid-body; across

Mid-body and under, draped, a prism
Sheen or spleen of mother-of-pearl

And thin skin. Across the counter, sprawled,
On ice in all its coldness, a mackerel

Limp, its ghost-eyes pierced into skull
Like pearls, its head a part of its body

Under Mackerel Sky, a bevy of dead mackerel
Shells placed as decorum on Day's blue walls.

:

In Delos, a fisherman, in a Pleyt, spotted
A Horse entering the sea and, by it,

Getting swallowed. In Brine, the Horse
Transforms and turns into Poseydon.

In Brine, in rows, steams of uncoloured
Fish, till he arcs in a downhill motion

His spear and turns - clad in damask-
Each fish into a cross between Salmon

And Pirayah, names them Brinelos.

Crevalle Jacks from Nova Scota to Uruguay

From Nova Scota to Uruguay
and Portugal to Angola,

The Crevalle Jacks swim all day
In steams, bodies of draped

Luminosity as silver-green
As mackerel essence, eyes

Like pearls pierced into
The heads - each head a part
Of their broad bodies. In

Delphi, Apollo praised
Each Jack by silvery line

Across mid-body; now across
Mid-waist an prism sheen.

Moth-flocked, I row out in a canoe;
drag a part of the lake with

my paddle. God coats ten bees
in broad daylight. Their bodies

are ten pearls, wings a hymn draped
around them like seaweed. Beaver tail

slap water. Water rise and stick to fur.
I would stare through wood if wood

was air and penetrable.

Stages for: a Butterfly

.4
In a Mimesis of moths, these swallowtails
fly lambent over water - all wings all head

and body. Thorax contraction, then sudden
wing-fluttering. There are two swallowtails

whose wings are dim and frail with age.
Tongues coil and uncoil licking the rests

of a halcyon nest.


.3
A pupa whorls inside the cocoon hanging
like pears: tip and end of body twist like

Nautilus shells. Think fingerprints here,
think sea snake without its scales'

oily gleam of luminosity. Think cat on lap
or snail inside its shell. . .

Larva uncoils as cocoon dilates.


.2
Putti-innocenct, a larva lies stock-still
beneath the leaves, a crawler whose trail behind

is only slime and blank.


.1
The egg is less cream than milk-chroma
when it cracks open. Alcyone swathes

enamel shells.

Rainbow Abalone

Abalone shell: Imagine opaline fields of soap
bubbles, minus spheres. Imagine wet, rainbowy

abalone, whose surface looks like oil on hot
asphalt - that same bubbly, water-coloured

smear & smudge on layered flakes as frail
as thistle stems.

Rainbow Abalone

Abalone shell: Imagine opaline fields of soap
bubbles, minus spheres. Imagine wet rainbow

abalone, whose surface looks like oil on hot
asphalt - that same bubbly, water-coloured

smear & smudge on layered flakes as frail
as thistle stems. Imagine Grand Canyon -

rugged, red rocks on rough landscape.


Watery, rainbowy abalone, whose glossy surface
looks like oil on hot asphalt - it's that same

bubbly, water-colour smear & smudge on layered
flakes, brittle as pompom stems - tender as flesh.