The Poet Letting It All Be

Poet.

The word is deceiving.  It comes from the Greek poein or poiein, meaning “to make, create, or compose.”  But what is left out of that etymological definition is that the poet crafts something not out of nothing, but out of what is there.  The poet takes what he finds in the world and makes something new out of it.  And the best poet takes a lesson from the culinary world, letting the ingredients of his work speak for themselves.  A poet from Asbury Park said this better than I ever could.

And the poets down here don’t write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
(Bruce Springsteen, “Jungleland”)

My goal in writing is to take what is found and, to the best of my ability, make it into poetry.  I desire to take life’s experiences and craft words around them, presenting them as they are, letting them be.  To me, the narrator may be part of the story, but he is not the story.  What occurs about him, around him–that is the story, and the story I strive to tell.

The purpose of this page is to present my writing, talk about my writing process, and–hopefully one day–propel myself into the life of a professional author.