When people praise a poem that I can't understand, I always think they're lying.
—Stephen Dunn

How could I have known that I can sustain the writing of a longer poem [or, more truthfully, my own interest in that poem] if it were not for coming to MacDowell and being given the gift of space and time? Most of my work up until now has been half-a-page, sometimes up to a page, attributable to a compression of life, living, the quotidian concerns. It is rare to go over that one page, but now, now, it happens, and I think, that's okay. In fact, it's very cool, this expansion, while [I think, I hope] still retaining the feel of the goodness, that aphoristic nature of a short poem.