I’m delighted to share a gift with my newsletter subscribers: a complimentary Reader’s Companion to my latest poetry collection, The Boxer of Quirinal. In it, I do not explicate the poems; instead, I give a taste of the context in which I was writing — the circumstances that influenced each poem’s coming into being.

Poetry and personal responsibility has always been a troubling issue for me — and for anyone, I think, who tries to reconcile the lives of poets with their poems.

It’s the stuff of bad dreams. It comes to us again with the second Titanic sinking. There is no such punishment in Dante’s Inferno, but it lives in other poems. And it goes to sea with every sailor.

I’m writing with something to celebrate: Over 5,000 readers have added The Boxer of Quirinal to their to-read list on Goodreads!

June 20th marked the official launch of my new book, The Boxer of Quirinal. The poems, written over ten years, explore challenges that all animals – from majestic herons to humble inchworms – face in their struggle to survive. But humanity must confront an additional obstacle: the eternal presence of war. So how do we live with that?

To be a poet is to be attached to life by a different set of hooks.

Emily Dickinson’s example permits all “Nobodies” to believe in their own work in spite of the world’s neglect. And I say, bless her for that.

Poetry is a manifestation of the human urge to make sense of chaos, to find unity and symmetry in external reality.

Thoughts about poetic form.

Can you recall ever giving a poetry reading that might have gone better, or might better not have happened at all? It happens to all of us. Even marquee poets can remember the reading where no one came.