"To think a flower"

Yesterday, I was going through some mixes for Demo Demolition, and I surprised myself by finding some old over-driven and tape-saturated recording from decades ago. I laughed to myself at all of the poems that I have collected. I said to myself, that I should be more serious about my poetry. Hah! Rather, the exact opposite, silliness should abound. Furthermore, I should be more serious about the poetry of others.

For years, my favorite poet was Charles Simic. I had read an interview in which he said something in the range of: "When I write 'rats in diapers'... I mean rats in diapers." That was all I needed to hear. With this, I was able to write things that surprised me and this amused me to no end.

Currently, my favorite poet is Fernando Pessoa. He was born June 13, 1888 in Portugal. The book that got my attention was The Keeper of Sheep. The other way to say it is: O Guardador de Rebanhos. The poems inside moved me immensely. "To think a flower is to see it and smell it." The english translation was done by Edwin Honig & Susan M. Brown. This thin light-blue paperback was published by Sheep Meadow Press in 1997. The book is written by Pessoa's heteronym (imaginary character) Alberto Caeiro.