Charles Jensen | Writer

Is anyone in my generation not indebted to “The Colonel”? If not indebted, can any of us write without acknowledging it or understanding its importance?

At its core, this is a book about exile: physical exile abroad–the kind of displacement of vision that burnishes a poet’s perspective both on the world and on one’s own vision of the world.

Emotional exile–the separation from what one sees and what one feels about what one sees, and then the ability to write it down without qualifying it.

Intellectual exile–the be in the body and to be confronted with death, violence, fear. To continue on.

These exiles are necessary. To be a poet we must not be ourselves. This book is evidence that a collective voice can have one body, can speak for many, can speak for those who cannot or will not speak, is necessary. It’s evidence that a solitary voice can be heard by many.