I write poems to shine a light on the spaces between things. Poems exist on the border between articulating and gesturing. They introduce images and sing along to them. They don’t finish anything up.

Prose is something else. “If you want to communicate, use the telephone,” bellowed Richard Hugo. I use prose when what I want to say is too complicated for the phone.

Richard Hugo used a town as a metaphor for “triggering” the imagination into writing a poem. You’d imagine a town, not your hometown exactly, but some other place where stuff could happen. I think the most intriguing things happen in the in-between places, on the edges of settlement.

Here's something I wrote about "Making Things and Making Things Better," the dilemma of how artistic practice imitates or inspires the art of living a good life.

For a few poems from The Bled, my new book of poetry, click here. It's out from Factory Hollow Press.