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from 'The Victor Poems'

These 21 poems published in literary journals are part of a long, on-going sequence titled The Victor Poems, which bridges narrative story-telling with lyric reflection. It’s major research imperative is to explore the sort of exceptional friendship posited by Emerson: ‘We walk alone in the world. Friends, such as we desire, are dreams and fables’. Research into ‘friendship’ poets as varied as Horace, Emerson, Pearce Hutchinson, and Frank O’ Hara, informed the book as did research into the ‘panegyric’ poetry of Arabic poet, al-Mutanabbī. Complementary research into friendship theorists such as Aristotle, Montaigne, and, again, Emerson, have informed the book’s interest in philosophy as well as the ‘formal’ shape of the poetry as a hybrid collection of narrative-lyrics. Assuming the posture/voice of a group of hapless narrators in search of (and meditating on) former friend Victor who has abandoned them for the Arctic, the collection brings philosophical reflection to the forefront of the discourse. That said, the collection aims to balance such with gestural detail (of Victor, of the Arctic) which describes friendship as something inspiring ‘awe’ and ‘fear’ (‘the sublime’ of Kant and Burke). Kant’s description of the sublime as ‘formless’ is central to the collection (Victor is absent and ‘formless), and offers a counter-pose to the paradoxically prescribed ‘form’ a friend must take (according to such friendship theorists as above). The book’s ultimate goal is to challenge the very tradition/form of ‘friendship poetry’ it’s invested in. Instead of parody, however, the goal is to explore philosophically-inspired themes (eg. ‘the friendship… of men to gods, is a relation to them as to something good and superior’, Aristotle), via a ludic poetry which is simultaneously serious in its quest for redemption (ie. a poetry of ‘playful and plaintive addreses’, as the Boston Review Poetry Prize citation reads).