Michele Serres tell us that “every form is draped in an infinity of adherences.” I have come to consider these “adherences” as discernible sensations that impact the construction of the sentence itself as it forms in my consciousness. I believe that the sense of amplification (which I have come to feel is infused with death) allows me to feel the spaces between “adherences” even as they are forming. It keeps them from clarifying too soon, from becoming too concretized in the ways of my logic and life; it lets the formative process come with more of death’s intimate anonymity, into my awareness.

In the poems that will make up my next book, After Urgency, I’ve attempted to follow the sentence beyond the first drapings of meaning that would envelop it. I find the use of revision essential, since it often takes many versions and shifts of language to follow the force of amplification to where it will yield the most resonance. But I should say that this is as much a physical experience as intellectual. I follow the sentence with my skin, I listen for what makes my skin prick up.