I don’t think it would ever be possible for me to disentangle poetry and friendship in my life—friendship is so central to my composition and editorial process, and poetry is so central to basically all of my relationships.
I envy so much people who are able to edit, destroy, sculpt. Sometimes I worry I explode onto the page, and what may seem like stylistic choices are really just my overeagerness and inability to complete my own thoughts.
I’m thinking about the difference between intensity and suffering. I think a lot of people conflate intensity with suffering and go out of their way to avoid intensity—intense fear, intense joy, intense pleasure, intense pain, intense heat or cold, intense introspection, intense curiosity. (And on the flip side, I’ve always known and felt close to those who are intensity junkies.)