05/23/2010
2.
I confess thoughts
I do not want thoughts.
I confess words
I spoke to think
words in others what I cannot think
in myself:
Wilderness, bewilder.
4.
Proud where I should feel shame
Shameful where I should feel pride
Great, gray goose
The one-strand river has no other side
5.
This diary meant for other eyes
Is how I am naked when I arrive
This pudency is the selfish blank
This name a scent
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of four books of poems and one book of inter-linked essays. He teaches in the MFA Program at Colorado State University.
The poems in “Puritanisms” take as their triggering concern Puritan diaries, that strange form of expression in which one “confesses” oneself to oneself, a doubling of the private that in essence ends privacy, and forcibly puts one in consideration of oneself as a primary form of doubt.
BIO:Dan Beachy-Quick is the author of four books of poems and one book of inter-linked essays. He teaches in the MFA Program at Colorado State University.