Spring 2016

Those lines come from the poet’s frustration with trying to get at the truth by nailing the abstract nature of it down to something physical in the world. We do feel that there are times we know the truth, and we’d like to believe we can show just how well we know it through making metaphors. Of course, these metaphors fail us since the truth (tenor here) shifts in ways the metaphors (vehicle) can’t. I wanted, in these poems, to admit that I wouldn’t be getting it right but that I’ll keep trying and that I’ll get so close that sometimes—however briefly—I’ll feel satisfied.