NOTES FROM THE STUDIO

Intent matters. When a sculptor chisels out a sculpture of, say, a woman's face by listening to the lines/waves/seams of the stone block -- instead of determining at the outset to sculpt a woman's face -- the result (expression) will be different.

I've forgotten how many layers of reproductions I've been writing to come to the reproductions that will appear in REPRODUCTIONS OF THE LOST FLAG. To reproduce a memory, let alone a lost memory -- that's surely one way to lose/forget the personal "I"...

... in the same way the sculptor loses himself in stone by being stone.

Sometimes, to write poems, you need to listen to stone -- also a metaphor for silence. Listening to silence -- I wouldn't wish for this to become a lost art ...