Write The Poem Only You Can Write.

The First Line Is The Dna Of The Poem; The Rest Of The Poem Is Constructed Out Of That First Line. A Lot Of It Has To Do With Tone Because Tone Is The Key Signature For The Poem. The Basis Of Trust For A Reader Used To Be Meter And End-rhyme.

A Trouble With Poetry Is The Presence Of Presumptuousness In Poetry, The Sense You Get In A Poem That The Poet Takes For Granted An Interest On The Reader's Part In The Poet's Autobiographical Life, In The Poet's Memories, Problems, Difficulties And Even Minor Perceptions. I Try To Presume That No One Is Interested In Me. And I Think Experience Bears That Out. No One's Interested In The Experiences Of A Stranger - Let's Put It That Way. And Then You Have Difficulty Combined With Presumptuousness, Which Is The Most Dire Trouble With Poetry.

No One Here Likes A Wet Dog.

I Was A Pretty Happy Kid, I Had To Fake It. I Had To Get Into This Miserable Character Before I Wrote Poems.

Every Day Is For The Thief Is A Vivid, Episodic Evocation Of The Truism That You Can't Go Home Again; But That Doesn't Mean You're Not Free To Try. A Return To His Native Nigeria Plunges Cole's Charming Narrator Into A Tempest Of Chaos, Contradiction, And Kinship In A Place Both Endearingly Familiar And Unnervingly Strange. The Result Is A Tale That Engages And Disturbs.