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Poems say what words cannot. They reach for what words mean to say, what they wish they had said, what they need to say. Words themselves are sometimes too shy, too inadequate, too overused. Poems stop us, for a moment, and say, pay attention. And when we do, we are better for it. Paying attention is now and has always been the great magic of the world.
As a writer, and a poet particularly, I have come to see the value of paying attention, and the wisdom of paying attention not simply to oneself. Paying attention to and for others, and to the things of this world, too--this has given to me a new work, a next level of consideration. It has given me, as well, a sense that the small things we do can compensate and must act as the restorative salve to great problems. It is in and by these small, tender acts that we will understand what matters most to us.
The following are poems of public purpose. By this I mean to say that these are not poems I would have normally written myself--rather, these are poems of occasion, of circumstance, of request where the request suggested an idea of substance. These are poems both mine and not mine, then, poems that do a wide and fresh public work.
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