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These pages embody my philosophy of poetry and life.
Just as a theory is a statment that attempts to account
for all the known facts in a field of inquiry, a philosophy
is an attempt to organize a body of knowledge; in the case of my
philosophy, it's how I've got it together.
To repeat,
scansion is my thing, not perfect all the time, but it defines poetry
as free or disciplined. It takes poetry somewhere beyond rambling
emotion. It adds the intellect to a weightier presence because
the emotion is an intellectualized form of passion.
It brings
the possibility of eloquence, which I define as an achievement,
or effect, issuing only from the amalgam of intellect and
passion. Poetry is something more than an affair of the heart,
a feeling, worn on the sleeve. Poetry makes one feel and think,
think about what you feel,
and feel what you think.
No dichotomy there.
I write according to general principles of scansion.
I am not
free under the rules, except in imagination.
The discipline
of the rules forces greater attention to the content expressing the
ideas. Therefore, I try to be a "strict constructionist".
I tire of the scofflaw verse that careens
out of control across the page
ignoring the rules of the road,
missing the elements of rhythm.