Increasingly, I am interested in a poetics of listening and looking—of responsiveness. Putting myself in a position to hear and see rather than privileging a position that makes heard and seen. A seeking that precedes and nourishes speech. Lately, I’ve been thinking of poems as language and the writer collaborating. Words and word-parts getting their own say and not just saying for someone else. And, so, the mastering ego is displaced.

Play is a way I stifle my own impulse to control with the wish of making myself available to the emergence of the uncanny and all it reveals. Play might come in the form of constraints—of generative engines and the navigation they require, or, rather, the exploration, given that navigation implies a decidedly preferable path—or in the form of an attitude—a willingness; I hear “generous” in “generative” and aim to let a generosity guide me.