reality is just a menace

Curtis Fox: Was [writing the poem “Having My Cards Read”] a conscious attempt to go capture a very particular experience?

W.S. Di Piero: Sure. It’s just that a “particular experience” for me is always complicated, and usually conflicted. I guess my dream experience would be a pure, unconflicted tonality.

CF: “A pure, unconflicted tonality”. What do you mean by that?

WSDP: I keep aspiring toward a certain type of simplicity that I seem never quite able to achieve.

CF: Because reality intrudes?

WSDP: Reality is just a menace. And to honour experience, to honour the real, means to constantly allow that menace into my consciousness when I’m making poems.

- W.S. Di Piero, in interview with Curtis Fox for the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast. You can listen to the whole thing here.