O Love, Where Are You

As I Get Older, I Recognize That My Thinking About Poetry May Or May Not Have Anything Actively To Do With My Actual Work As A Poet. This Strikes Me As No Thing Cynically Awry But Rather Seems Again Instance Of That Hapless Or Possibly Happy Fact, We Do Not As Humans Seem Necessarily Aware Of What We Are Physically Or Psychically Doing At All!

There Are A Lot Of Editorials That Have Nothing To Do With Anything Like That. But I Was Just Thinking Of That Sense Of Prose As Being Very Responsible And Perceptive, Thoughtful, Intimate, And Contriving A Quote Statement.

Locale Is Both A Geographic Term And The Inner Sense Of Being.

Still, No One Finally Knows What A Poet Is Supposed Either To Be Or To Do. Especially In This Country, One Takes On The Job—because All That One Does In America Is Considered A "job"—with No Clear Sense As To What Is Required Or Where One Will Ultimately Be Led. In That Respect, It Is As Particular An Instance Of A "calling" As One Might Point To. For Years I've Kept In Mind, "many Are Called But Few Are Chosen." Even So "called," There Were No Assurances That One Would Be Answered.

Suddenly The Whole Imagination Of Writing And Editorial And Newspaper And All These Presumptions About Who Am I Reading This, And Who Else Other People May Be, And All That, It's So Grimly Brutal!