if anybody gains any more info about Peter’s passing, please let me know, ok? the more i think about it, the sadder i get.

and i’ll let you define that according to your own devices…

do you find your work has gotten more personal or less personal over the years?

for instance, i always prided myself on my poems having less to do with the facts of my personal life than it may have appeared on the surface. There was plenty of emotional connection, of course, but it was dangerous to assume that a specific incident in my poetry actually happened.

My infamous mythical daughters who have appeared in a lot of my work are the best example of this…i used them to explore all sorts of observations about my friends getting older, my own relationship to the truth, and of course my nieces…but of course, i have no kids.

while that’s still mostly true, i find i write more closely to the bone of real life these days. my definitions of what i will and will not share have changed and i’ve become more free in using aspects of my life. in addition, a given poem tends to hew more closely to a description of “my” mental/emotional state than a generic human emotion i may be exploring. (I hope this is coming out right.) Of course, I want to always connect that with the general human experience — it’s not navel gazing — but i am approaching the challenge differently these days — i was always the anti-confessional poet, and now i find the pendulum swinging — not radically, but swinging nonetheless.

i’m curious — how has your writing changed?

Peter Conti, aka Peter of the Earth, poet of NYC, who died of cancer Friday morning.

I met Peter on the 2000 SlamAmerica tour. Peter was funny, kind, and could be both softspoken and outrageous — sometimes, both at once. I hadn’t seen him in a while and had wondered what he was up to, but like so many other times, I assumed I would catch up eventually.

Stupid.

He’ll be missed.