There are very few adults in our culture able to imagine any genuine life coming from the vertical plane - tradition, religion, or devotion.

The French still offer Sartre and Derrida rather than Pascal.

I felt a longing to compose a radical or root poem that would speak to what has its back turned to me.

Hierarchy, as in the Catholic Church, has to do with power, and vertical attention has to do with longing.

Vertical attention is not the same as, and doesn't evolve from nor imply, hierarchy. We could say that hierarchy is associated with power, and vertical attention with longing for the Divine Feminine, for the Divine Masculine, for what the Sufis call 'wine.'

I think that poetry is important when you are shipwrecked, when the ordinary structures that hold you up are gone.

There are very few adults in our culture able to imagine any genuine life coming from the vertical plane - tradition, religion, or devotion.