I have written a few things lately, about five poems, that show a kind of light promise of developing toward a book, and that is a little unexpected and nice. Only one of the poems is in the block form, and I really don't think many of the poems in this book will be in the block form, which has served as the foundational form I work in and justifies, if that's the word I want, the term Concrete Formalism.
Now, I could easily shift mentally into a particular gear and say to myself that these poems are a development of concrete formalism, even as they do not conform to certain formal principles. Other principles are in place and no doubt exhibit formalist features rendered visually, either directly or allusively. I could say this, but I am tired of my voice saying things. Many of us who have been around for 50+ years have tired of hearing ourselves speak, I am sure of that. For my part, I prefer hearing nothing from me that concerns myself directly; better yet, I like to hear myself contributing to universal silence, in my small way. Silence is a lovely foretaste of death after all. I am quite sure that one who can enjoy silence will have a better time of it when death comes knocking. We'll be trained for it, you see.
The writer who like the sound of not hearing his own voice, whether audible or not, is a harbinger of the peace that comes to all. In the end, what other poems should we write? We cannot write from the perspective of death unless we somehow share in death in our lifetime. The silence of a writer speaks volumes of how death takes one by the hand and stills the beating heart.
So I will write these poems, but I will not spend too much time explaining them to myself. Like a day's journey with no particular destination in mind, whether along highways or over country roads, through meadows and forest, I will wait for and view with interest these poems as they occur, when they occur, however they occur, and for whatever end.
