For me there is no more valuable way to start the morning in the studio than by reading poet Jane Hirshfield, and her book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. I think it possible that I will still be reading this book, quarter-page by quarter-page, for decades; her words are so resonant and visual they transform my world each time I read them. This morning’s find was a passage on subtlety:

 “ Subtlety’s etymological roots lie in the loom-woven cloth. It is the name we give to thought that is both finely textured and ranging, able to bring disparate and multiple qualities into the unified, usable fabric of a new whole. The uncertain is subtlety’s inscape: what is woven has – and needs – gaps. In subtle response, thought is stitched into place with its own undertows, opposites, and extensions, by a mind that questions and crosshatches its statements and feelings. Language itself is subtle by nature, multi-stranded of meaning – and what is good poetry if not language awake to its own powers?” 

Although my work ranges over many themes, the overarching theme may be the means of expression itself: language. Even when the framework is not visible, my background [Read more…]