Swagger & Remorse
Not long ago, I began looking at several on-line “confessional” websites. I sought to use the texts as triggering mechanisms for poems. I found that despite the “unpolished” and “non-literary” quality of the on-line writings, the tone is beautifully colloquial and conversational, brave and unabashed. There is poetry beneath the swagger and remorse.
My work to date has existed in a place where nature and religious mythology/vanity intersect. I am also interested in the notion of elegy: what do we note of what someone else leaves behind? There is something elegiac—something regretful—in the passage of intimate thoughts into a public forum, whether it is in an obituary or through a self-posted, on-line confession. Elegy and confessional may seem unlikely combinations, but both serve as testimonials, with empathy as their meeting points.
- Richard Fox