Michael Hannon's notebook

In the poet brain are the perfect words.

The poem itself is somewhere inside the perfect words, perfectly.

When the poem writer finds the perfect words, he passes them on to the poem reader who must in turn find them for himself or herself.

There's a poem staring at you right now. It's there in plain sight, hiding on the paper like a heart hides inside a body.

The poem began at dawn when the poet went for coffee and bagels in the lobby of the hotel in Fairfax, California. The poet burned the bagels in the toaster and the Indian woman who owns the hotel objected.

The poet noticed a sign posted in the lobby--"Don't interpret my kindness as weakness"--and gave it proper attribution.

By the time the poet reached San Francisco, the poem had more or less written itself--three lines that make one of the "Lyrica" poems the poet and the poem reader have to find all by themselves.