Stories Too Fiery to Sing Too Watery to Whisper

The pleasure of feeling the poem discovering itself is always a particular joy in reading this poet -- especially so because the voyage of discovery each poem seems to make is, finally, a journey toward the light — whether inside or outside, grand and glorious or fine and concentrated and elusive and just or almost entirely out of reach... yet somehow still in there or out there somewhere, waiting to be found. (From the Preface, by Tom Clark) These are kinds of Sufi narrative poems, but not stories exactly and more like ecstatic perceptions and surreal notions leading (God willing) to Light.