From an earlier publication

An audience that chooses its own captivity is a natural counterpart to players who do the same. One wonders: are there two types of shame for each of these two types of people: the tragedians, obscured by shadows, and the comedians, sweating in the footlights? The plight of the comedian: they are performing an act their audience has already seen. The fate of the tragedian: everyone knows the story, even if they don't know the hero.

Things I am working on

A technical education in versifying

Keenly I feel my ignorance when up against the subtleties of interpreting and writing poetry. It is so unlike prose in that I have no natural aptitude for it, and vers libre does not suit me: too often it feels cheap and tawdry, when some will insist that what makes poetry poetic is precisely its not being prosaic.

That is not to say that prose cannot be poetic, but the prose poem is a different animal. I recently came across John Ashbery's "For John Clare" and found it was tremendous.