On Restlessness
As for the unknown/unknowable, I think it’s all those other selves within us that are both a part of and separate from our conscious selves—memory, dream, demons perhaps better left undisturbed, perhaps not. A poet writes about any number of things, but whether confessional or not, every poem is in part a record of an engagement between our conscious and unconscious selves—which is why the writing of poetry can be so dangerous. We are likely to learn more than we planned on, in the course of making. We thought we knew a thing. Now we know it differently. That’s the effect of the poem on its maker and ideally that should also be the effect on the reader of the poem.