who is this mysterious figure?

...is a poet, which is surprisingly commonplace.

Poets are everywhere these days if you know where to look, yet hardly any of them are wandering in rags under the moonlight, whispering to exotic flowers, or drinking martinis in the car park at the witching hour. Now, being commonplace isn't a bad thing... or is it? I understand that you would prefer something rare and precious, like an expensive tourmaline ring, or an Articuno. But does it follow that you feel negatively towards the reliable, courageous Pidgeotto? Of course not. Now, if Oliver were to become suddenly rich, famous, or notorious, he might feel emboldened RE: car park martinis in the moonlight, and general literary seriousness. He might even create a website that front-loaded his artistic accomplishments, instead of taking the user meanderingly through a narcissistic, improvised monologue that serves no informational or transactional purpose. But for now the creative impulse will continue to manifest itself as inappropriately digressive web copy.*

“I called my incapacity for living genius, and I dressed up my cowardice by calling it refinement. I placed myself—God gilded with false gold—on an altar of cardboard painted to look like marble. But I didn't succeed in fooling myself, nor my self delusion.”— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Books

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Selected work

Recent poems

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Correspondence

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