Letter from a Poet in the Poetry Workshop

"I can enter your poems, submerge myself in their liquid and dirt, feel held or carried by them, but I cannot “keep” them the way I might keep a talisman, a work of art hung on my wall, a line by Hopkins “Glory be to God for dappled things—“. Your poems feel to me as if they are happening in the present moment I read them in, constantly moving and changing like a river. Even though the words are the same each time I open one of your books, they change. They are a different color each time, a different song, a different taste. Or am I the one who has changed? But not all poems move with me, or move me (that is, my consciousness) the way yours do." By Lizi Gilad Silver on The Volta Blog