“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.” —Mark Strand

a wife asks her husband, “why do you read so much poetry” in which he replies, “poetry is like photography with words. a good poem, like a good photograph, slowly tears apart the sleepy cocoon of our mundane lives, revealing the soul, and giving it to the reader/viewer. by reading poetry, I am practicing photography. I have searched the rooms of this house over and over and over. each time something new is revealed to me. everyday I lift my camera to a house full of poems, like distant stars in the night sky. I go around collecting these moments. each one pokes a tiny hole into the universe. with enough light, I can keep the darkness away. I have put you in this light, not to exemplify your beauty, but to exemplify the beauty of the light, and even more so, my fear of the darkness.”

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.” —Ezra Pound

“The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.”
—Mark Strand