“You can say whatever you want—if you reckon with it.” Joy asked me to be relentlessly forgiving and magnanimous toward all conditions of human life, and equally toward those of my own. She encouraged me to look closely, and said poetry would teach me how to pay attention and show me how to care. I must choose love over any other thing. Then, the world would open up for me. “Do you see now?” she asked me. “That’s why a poem is more than just words—it’s why poets have everything.”
