The Human Eye

"Wherever I turn these days, I'm looking, as from the corner of my eye, for a certain kind of poetry whose balance of dread and beauty is equal to the chaotic negations that pursue us. Amid profiteering language, commoditizing of intimate emotions, and public misery, I want poems that embody -- make into flesh -- another principle. A complex, dialogic, coherent poetry to dissolve both complacency and despair."

- Adrienne Rich, preface to Thomas Avena, Dream of Order