"Poetry began for me as a field of solitude. It gave me a way, from childhood, to query & provision a self, to find out for myself who i was, what I felt, what I thought. But once a piece of writing is put forward for others to read, the field expands: where once there were trees, making windbreak & shelter, now there are bleachers. The privacy-crafted self is seen. While writing, a poet is predator: you hunt word, world, feeling, music, responsiveness, attitude, resilience; hunt grief, joy, your deep question and that question's momentarily-sufficient answer. With publication, though, a poet is suddenly prey, subject to judgement—which, whatever the judgement, is an entirely changed relationship to the poem & the world. The leap into public life as a writer was for me awkward, both painful & strange. And yet, I also knew that we are ultimately communal beings, whose life does not end at the skin. Art is never a matter of just the single self, made as it is with the shared materials of language & craft-history, a set of cups to hold the intoxicating spirits."
excerpted from the book "Passwords Primeval" by Tony Leuzzi
https://www.boaeditions.org/bookstore/catalog/product/view/id/936/
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