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And I'm working on a new book
of poems called The Forest.

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And I have been,
for a long time,

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writing poems that have to
do with my apprehensions

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about the country that
I live in and love.

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My worries about the forms
of violence and disregard

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that characterize so much
of what is done in our name

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as Americans or in
our streets, as people

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who live here but are
not granted the shelter

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or harbor of citizenship.

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And those are questions
that are still on my mind.

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Surprise.

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But I also am looking for
another vocabulary and register

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with which to explore them.

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It is so easy to fall into the
pattern of logical argument,

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and attempting to
persuade someone

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when I really believe that much
injustice is not necessarily

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a failure of logic but an
alternate form of logic.

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And I realized that
the lyric imagination

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is a really wonderful tool
for challenging ourselves,

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for marrying things together
that don't ostensibly

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seem to belong together and for
stepping into our larger selves.

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And so I think a lot of
the poems in this book

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are seeking to rise
up to that register,

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both in terms of the
particular cadence of language,

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what feels in some ways to me
like an ecstatic accumulation

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and maybe in something that
has to do with the psychic wish

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to return to this largeness
that I know is in us.