Actions have consequences. Ignorance about the nature of those actions does not free a person from responsibility for the consequences. (28)

I'm reading a manuscript by Rodney Jones, "Village Prodigies",it's one of the best contemporary poetry books I've ever read ever.

I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.

Each thing I do, I rush through so I can do something else. In such a way do the days pass - -a blend of stock car racing and the never ending building of a gothic cathedral. Through the windows of my speeding car I see all that I love falling away: books unread, jokes untold, landscapes unvisited.

I write poems to find out why I write them

Let's say someone has experienced a violent trauma or betrayal: a child has been raped by a parent or has witnessed the destruction of someone he loves or has been so traumatized by the possibility of beatings and punishments that he's afraid to act. If the trauma is great enough, that person's life may become frozen, emotionally frozen even though he still gets up in the morning, is busy all day, and goes to bed at night. But there's this empty space that begins to fill with rage, rage toward everyone - the perpetrator, the people in the world who haven't suffered, even toward himself. (174)

I had not read George Eliot, so read a few. I felt ashamed I hadn't read "Middlemarch" before.