The crowd is made of little gods, and there is still no heaven.

The crowd is made of little gods, and there is still no heaven.

Metaphor is ritual sacrifice. It kills the look-alike. No, metaphor is homeopathy.

The ghosts swarm. They speak as one person. Each has left something undone.

Poetry wants to make things mean more than they mean, says someone, as if we knew how much things meant, and in what unit of measure.

We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean.

As for the differences between audio and the printed page, the sonic aspects of poetry are important to me. I read my poems aloud to myself as I'm composing them. And I enjoy reading to an audience. I think people get tone more easily when they hear a writer read her work. Some people have told me they hear more humor in my poems at a live reading than when they see them on the page. I think that may be a matter of pacing. On the other hand, I've listened to a lot of poetry readings and I know how much you can miss. If you stop to really register one line, you miss the next three or so.