To be an ‘American poet’ is a choice, one that I personally made three decades ago when I pondered the alternatives between leaving a United States that was then engaging in an openly imperialist war in Indochina and staying, which meant resisting the draft and risking imprisonment.
“There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we’ve discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror.”
John Coltrane