A Few Things I Stole

A poet’s job isn’t easy. It’s shadow work. You don’t see much of what the poet does but work we do. Mostly it is deep inside, a constant malaise that churns and brings forth a work of art. But it is also about consuming, digesting experience and life. It is also learning from those who came before.

Reading is the door through which the poet enters the kingdom of truth. Reading those who’ve written well and sucked up time’s marrow and delivered the goods, brought home the bacon. You need to read voraciously as a poet and in doing so, you pick up the entrails, the traces of other “greats” and they appear in your voice and your work.