05/23/2010
Dan Beachy-Quick
from ‘Puritanisms’

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:

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.
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