The Inconclusive Rule

None of these poems have been previously published. I am the photographer for all the pictures youll see in the book. I was inspired to make use of the photographs, all originally taken for a different purpose, by W. G. Sebalds use of photographs in his novel Austerlitz. Which is not to pretend to the moral and tragic dimension of that great work, these poems are motivated most often toward whimsy, stillness, or both, to which the photos are point and counterpoint. They were written over the quarter century between 1985 and 2010. I am now seventy-five years of age; I will not be writing more of them.