I was asked about where A.N. was coming from in the talk referenced below -- my notes are either lousy or not, but what I put below is all I took down. Still, I do know this: Alice was coming off reading piles and piles of crime novels (not to mention the tragic death from cancer of her beloved husband, the poet Doug Oliver) and was wondering what it might all mean, all this death and killing, in the context of her poetry, and of Poetry in general. Part of what spoke so loudly to me about her talk, besides the fact that it was Alice, who is always amazing -- even if my notes are like telegraphic afterthoughts and don't put that across -- was that she seemed to be speaking to what we all need to take into account, at least some of the time, when we do this writing thing, this living thing -- yes, what exactly does it mean, what we do, in the context of all this death and killing, fictional and not?

The following, from Kierkegaard, isn't quite right, not the perfect thing, but it comes to mind around all this:

"If a man were a beast or an angel, he would not be able to be in dread. Since he is a synthesis, he can be in dread, and the greater the dread, the greater the man."