Reading is a relationship outside of time and distance; however, the reader who encounters something personally known experiences a perceptual intimacy sometimes significant to the course of lives. That known element can be an aspect of identity, or of memory that gains potency in being shared. When an expressive work reveals these moments, there is the temporal consideration: how will time temper resonance?

The reader approaches a work with the entirety of their experience, the force of their life at the ready to engage the perceptions offered by the work. In the case of poetry, the history of the form itself offers potentialities of abundance, of profound reward for the reading experience. We read in search of that satisfaction. […]