Here's a poem by Jack Gilbert that chimes with my feelings about returning to Pittsburgh and "real life."

Tear It Down

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.

brief notes from amherst

- Finally, at Juniper. Left Pittsburgh at 5:30 a.m. last Sunday, drove through a rainy sunrise listening to Patrick Wolf's new album, "The Bachelor." My experience here thus far is proving immensely refreshing - provocative & productive. Today I walked into town & bought a small Cavafy & Gertrude Stein's "Tender Hooks." Amherst Books has a fantastic used section. Also bought, on instinct, "Inside the Blood Factory" by Diane Wakoski, a poet whom I've never heard of.

- Hello solitude, my sweet.

- I've been thinking a lot about Nan Goldin again, the poetry in her photography, the intersection of private acts & the catching movement of art. Particularly thinking about her photographs of couples & of those where her subjects are isolated & naked.

The obviously sensual or erotic is too easily gazed at as mere spectacle, body as artifact, alien. There's a subtlety to desire. When I wait through my initial responses (arousal, an experience of beauty) I find something uncomfortable or frightening...and, OH - ! Rilke, perhaps this is what you meant... ...