Twelve Poems With Preludes and Postludes

A dozen of the author's and editor's favorite poems from his previous books were selected and the author wrote a prose comment telling the story behind or the history of each of the twelve poems. "The history of any poem is a curious combination of experience, sensibility, contemporary climate, craft, and desire. Any variable here begets a different poem. What happens to any given poem after its publication in magazines, books, and in following texts and anthologies--as well as after oral readings by the author and others--is often surprising. This is because in any good poem the response is seldom related solely to the ideas but to the emotion created around the ideas. That is the tricky catalyst which sends the poem on. this book of TWELVE is about what came before and what has happened after each of them. Not all of it, of course; just a few brief notices. The poem by itself is what the poem is, but for anyone interested in poetry the preludes and postludes surrounding the poem can have their music also"--from the author's Foreword.