Poet Jane Hirshfield said "... the feeling I have about poem-writing (is) that it is always an exploration, of discovering something I didn't already know. Who I am shifts from moment to moment, year to year. What I can perceive does as well. A new poem peers into mystery, into whatever lies just beyond the edge of knowable ground."
I bring a different poem to the writing classes each week, not only to inspire but to introduce new poets to the group members.
At Seventy-Five: Re-Reading An Old Book by Hayden Carruth
My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live. I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe. If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred. Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain, The suffering. Who would have thought that petty Endurance could achieve so much? And prayers -- Were they prayers? Always I was adamant In my irreligion, and had good reason to be. Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now, A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather A movement of the natural human mind Bereft of its place among the animals, the other Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote Some of the words I said, which are these poems.
~ from Dr. Jazz (Copper Canyon Press, 2003)