Afterword

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These verses were written to explore the fundamental human need to connect with others. As a species we hunger to know that we are not alone. The internal exile of our own emotions and minds is our greatest fear and that undeniably powerful force drives us all to make ourselves vulnerable to each other, thereby perpetuating our species. That is the courage of intimacy.

Shakespeare more than alluded to the commonality of this need in the sexual ambiguity of his sonnets (e.g. Sonnet XX). The androgeny of the author and object of his verse suggests the universality of love and the complex emotions associated with it. Other writers like Yeats and Neruda, Plath and Stevens used the distorted and colorful imagery of the abstract to avoid the bias of superficial existence in order to explore that primitive level where archetypal motivation might be found.

Muses

In ancient times muses were described as some mystical spirit that infected an author's mind with ideas. It is, it would seem, to be an attempt to explain that baffling and frightening yet happy process by which our minds conjure. The human mind is the ultimate alchemist. It makes gold not from lead but from nothing. I believe that Muses take many forms and that we have an amazing gift of being able to create whole derivative works from the merest scraps of human experience.

    For example, The Courage of Intimacy was inspired by many things: a single phrase uttered in an eulogistic essay on a 1930's torch singer on National Public Radio ("The Courage of Intimacy"); the light of a full moon flooding the windows during a fitful rest ("La Voce Della Luna"); the lonely mood inspired by a foggy bay ("The Shore Across"); the rotting stubble pulled from a vegetable garden in Fall ("The Garden"); a meteor shower that stopped a pre-dawn run in its tracks ("Geminidae").

The poems are disjointed stylistically, pitting sonnets against free verse and simple end-rhyme. They reflect the variations or hesitations and discomfort with exploring the human condition and yet they are not necessarily autobiographical. I tried to find that level at which    sub-human    grunts   and   frustrated   gestures

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