The Inconclusive Rule

None of these poems have been previously published. I am the photographer for all the pictures youll see in the book. I was inspired to make use of the photographs all originally taken for a different purpose by W. G. Sebalds use of photographs in his novel Austerlitz. Which is not to pretend to the moral and tragic dimension of that great work: these poems are motivated most often toward whimsy stillness or both to which the photos are point and counterpoint. They were written over the quarter century between 1985 and 2010. I am now seventy-five years of age; I will not be writing more of them.