One Step at a Time

“There are a lot of people these days who write poems. Poetry of all grades. Libidinous lovers who drip syrupy, sentimental quatrains. Angry young men, and women, who bludgeon us over the head with deliberate obscurity. These people use poetry as catharsis. They are not poets... John writes because he can’t NOT write. It’s his blood, his pneuma, his manna. If you told him, “John, no more writing,” he would, being the nice guy he is, go quietly, but unmistakably, mad as a hatter. He sees, you see. That’s what a poet does. Some of them rip the veil in two, and grab the back of our head, and force us to face their version of reality. John lifts the curtain aside, and invites us to look. He takes an instant, shaves it clean of fuzzy perceptions, and hands it to us gently, saying, “See? Do you see?” No masks here. No fancy footwork. No fierce muscled obscurity. Just the same things you and I see every day, shorn of their disguises.” —from the introduction by Anita Wynn