I grew up in the Intermountain West region of the United States, and I woke up one morning to discover that I was still in the same place I had been all my life (despite having spent four years at college in California with an extended jaunt to Spain and Scotland sandwiched in, and New York City in there, somewhere, too). I had been writing sporadically since the time I could hold a pen, and I felt it was the time to pick it up again. I've dabbled in short and long stories, but the writing came out this time as poetry.Poetry is an excellent medium because poems can be as short as a line, or in Charles Bernstein's case, intentionally left blank, or 18,000 lines long like Melville's "Clarel." Any writing can be limitless, but poetry distills language into a compact thought, emotion, or experience, a tight package, a constriction that paradoxically opens us up.
I aim to create poems that evoke a visceral response, from disgust to rapture. I always want to be experimental with my poetry, playing with voice, tone, intent, language, everything that goes into making a poem. I don't want one quality to define my poems - I want some to be quotidian, while others are epic.
Stay a while and see if you like what you read.