All poetry is local.
Writing must engage with a particular place
or moment or point in the time-space continuum.
The local is place,
it is land, it is people and history and politics and fact.
The local is there when we look for it. Poetry
is an assertion of truths.
All poetry is political.
Even the absence of politics is a political
statement.
There is poetry masquerading as manifesto, and manifesto masquerading
as poetry.
There will be a return to the manifesto.
Manifestos require declarative
sentences.
There is no room for ambiguity in a manifesto.
A statement of ambiguity
is also a political act, the grays that fall along the spectrum,
or the ability to hold two opposing truths
at the same time, as though the opposite of a profound truth may
well be another profound truth.
Poetry is a lot like particle physics. A collection of poetry is the assertion of many truths, some of
them opposing.
For example, Gertrude Stein was right
about Oakland, and Gertrude Stein was wrong.
There is an urban there, and there is a rural there, and there
is a suburban there.
There is a virtual there.
There is work that I admire, and there is work I want to share
with others.
There is unfinished work to be done. There is a place, and there is a state of mind.
There is a political act.
There is poetry.
There is there, and there isn’t.
There is here.
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