Deletions from an Introduction for a Selected Poems (3)

 

In 1975 I published "The Insecurity of Art", an essay describing that poets need to begin from a place of not knowing, of insecurity, and this becomes a place of discovery. I write out of what I have experienced and sometimes this is also a place of darkness, we've all experienced darkness at some time in our lives: some are lost in a dark forest; others have descended to the underworld; and some of us had to begin life again in middle age, for nothing was as we believed. But darkness is also a place of creativity, of self-awareness, of rebirth and vision. And so I ask, what can be seen in the immensity of this darkness no matter how dark it is? It took me many years to know what is obvious to others; that tiny dot of light in the darkness is the discovery of love in one's life. It is greater than any darkness.