Preface, 1987

I have a limited interest in finding new ways to say the obvious, and no interest at all in finding clever ways to say nothing.
It is undeniable that waves break on the shore, that frustrated lovers pine, birds sing, various bits of the world look nice, sound nice, feel nice, smell nice, and taste nice, and that most of us are equipped with appropriate organs to record these facts. Equally, life is hard for some of the peasantry, and hardship builds character. I propose to ignore all such information.
I didn't write poetry when I was a love-sick youth. It lay ready-made in armfuls. Right now I'm not writhing in agonies of conscience.
The less astute among you may be wondering what there is left for me to versify. The shrewd will have spotted that I've left myself almost all the nasty things, all the funny things, and all the things that ordinarily interest humanity.

There are two polar views about poetry. The first is that it consists of that which is lost in translation. The second view is this:

   Verse is what is lost
   in translation. Poetry
   is the residue.

   Poetry is not
   a way of saying something,
   but something to say.

The present dominance of English, and its illusion of permanence, makes the first view popular, but how many Englishmen read the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Psalms, or, for that matter, the Kama Sutra, for the word-play?
I have no gripe with the first kind of poetry. It is often wonderful. I simply feel that, given limited time and talent, I do better to write the second kind.

I am a man who thinks in propositions. Propositions are things that can be true or false, or funny. Questions are not propositions. I find many questions interesting, but I prefer answers. Orders are not propositions. I'm not telling you what to do. The poems I write are thoughts expressible in words. I've put them in English. If you prefer, they should make equal sense in the language of your choice. You might well improve the expression while you are at it:

   Verse translators, suit your pleasure,
   state your fancy, pick your measure.
   Take me into rhyming couplets,
   terza rima, haiku, sonnets,
   hexameters, pentiambic blanks
   or polymorphous logopranks.
   Take my meaning, not my metre.
   Watch my logic, not my feet, or
   whether I have reasonable
   rhymes to end my lines.

Very likely, you can put them into better English. Feel free!