Anselm Hollo

A poet is a person who never comes to the end of a time or a place. There's always more, and more, and then even more in a poet's mind and in a poet's heart.

Once after Anselm Hollo read his poems in Los Angeles, a listener approached him and said, "thanks, I needed that." Anselm seemed to understand completely what the listener meant-- more than the listener himself understood.

The listener couldn't hear in Hollo's poems any distinction made between being a person and being a poet--one wasn't better or worse, higher or lower than the other--that he heard in so many other poets he'd listened to. The words he heard the poet Anselm Hollo say were actually engaged with the world, while seeming to be as free of ego attachment as anyone who's still a real person could make them.

Well, Anselm's gone now. It's difficult to know what to say when one comes to the end of something, but poets say it all the time.