ABOUT THE POET
& THE WORK
A poetry written in its own time. A meeting with what comes of its own need. Quieting the gatekeeps. A poetics of listening – not to editors or critics but to the poem, as one strains to hear a faint music far off.
A body of finished work amounting to more than 800 poems, little of it ever submitted for publication. Given long fermentation, each poem its own barrel, maturing over years.
A few poems appeared in the 1970s and 80s: The Rock, Sonoma Review, The Men's Journal, Desert Call, Forefront, Americas Review, Wingspan; a few recognized by the American Poetry Association. Poetry editor for The Men's Journal; the poetry column “A Way In” for Wingspan; led the Sonoma Creative Expression Workshop, bringing together poets, writers and artists.
Works include The Lucid Hallucinatorium, meditations on evil and on consciousness, essays on the work of Gary Snyder, a study of the Book of Job, a translation of the Tao Te Ching, and the plays Ezra in Pisa and Ezra Agon. Grew up on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound; living and writing now on Vashon Island; graduate of The Evergreen State College; M.S. in human ecology from Washington State University.
Take time to get it right. Don't go to print too early. Work over decades, use hundreds of drafts if necessary.
Talking too much risks the poem, exposing it like opening a roll of film outside the darkroom.
Poetry that takes wing like the flight of many birds.