[Writing a poem,]
Writing a poem,
worldly matters occupy me.

If I’m writing
and there’s a knock on the door,
I go open it
when I hear the sound.

It’s true that someone’s there,
even if it is to look for an address,
and since my house looked approachable
knocked on the door.

It’s also true that the alertness
that made me open the door
is the same that alerts me to a poem.
The address I’m shown
turns out to be mine.
         
                                                                    (2008)
from the book TREASURER OF PIGGY BANKS / Circumference Books
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Kristin Dykstra on "Dissonance and Dialogue"

"In other words, reading this kind of book can be like listening to a long musical work: Patterns emerge with time, as you get to know it, gradually. I never feel like I grasp a long work of poetry or music the first time—most of it bounces off my mind. The reward builds with more exposure. So I suppose that Dissonance could grow in the mind with repeat visits, and because of that dimension of time, the takeaway will intertwine with a reader’s own thoughts, experiences, silences."

via SAINT MICHAEL'S COLLEGE
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Cover of Importance of Being Feeble Minded - Nathan Spoon
What Sparks Poetry:
Nathan Spoon on Life in Public


"I hoped for this poem to expand beyond the realm of the scholarly, outward in a serious way relating to societal circumstances we are in together at present—and by societal I mean the global society of human beings sharing a planet, one tragically in a vortex of cascading concerns including war, surging debt and inflation, climate crisis, resource depletion and the crossing of planetary boundaries, growing inequality, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, and the backsliding of democracy.” 
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