I’ve…come to agree with George Seferis who once said that the poet has only one subject: his own living body. It is the body where we learn our first lessons in pain and pleasure, and our later lessons in betrayal and decay. The body is our surest source of knowledge. I used to be puzzled about why I can rarely remember my dreams. Half-conscious, I can still see that night’s adventure, the passionate scenes, the violent encounter, the eerie mutations of parent or lover. A moment later, fully awake, it’s all vanished. How can something so vivid, so extraordinary be immediately forgotten? Because it didn’t “happen” to our bodies, only to our imaginations. I’ve come to prefer poems that register their appeal to my physical experiences.

J.D. McCLATCHY