Metaphor is what interests me here, but metaphor always has its roots in the literal or real. Anything on which he could put a price, anything that had value on the street. I take my mudlarking seriously. What sustains me in my work is knowing that the real thing is down there, beyond metaphor, and that I will find it if only I dig deep enough. In Mudlark poetry is free.
Poetry is a gift economy.
Rather than asking that question of another poet, I ask it of Cavafy because of the method he developed for publishing and distributing his poems, which endlessly fascinates me. Instead, he had his poems printed, periodically, at his own expense as broadsheets. He actually kept a list, a very short list that was always changing, with the names of those readers on it. Poetry was an intimate occasion for Cavafy. His mode, in the love poems that have captured me, is direct address, special pleading.