(from jacket copy)



"[E]verything and anything suddenly seemed material for poetry—or not material, seemed to be poetry"



Elisabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell



When I set out to keep a blog I didn’t really know what I would be doing. I imagined a blog as a log of sorts, an account of activities more public than a diary, but not yet as formal and severed from my hand as a printed book. It would contain journeys, but also, itself, be a journey of sorts—I’d discover what it was by doing it.



Visible Poetry aimed to extend the log form to an expanded notion of poetry—which, it turns out, isn’t really a very large stretch.

For lyric emerges from song, from the rhythms of breath and the pace of walking. It’s a genre of discreet, carefully rendered observations, often punctual, sometimes diaristic. Photography too may have this quality.



Why now, a book?



Because sometimes you want to hold the words and images in your hands. Because a book lets you take stock of a distance traveled; quite literally, you can weigh it; it has heft, dimension, and the turning of the pages mimics the repetitious unfolding of thought across time. And because you can read a book on the beach and not worry that sand and water will ruin your connection with the world. On the contrary, they are the world!