ON: 'About the Nature of my Poetry"

Those of you who know me, know that I do not like to really define what my poetry is about. To me, that is an essential function of the reader as they interact with what has been written. What is most important is what they think about it. Still, there are often important themes in what the artist brings to his or her own work. It comes out of their unique expressions after all. Does that make what they think about it--the correct intrepretation? And, is there any single correct intrepretation? I believe the answer is an emphatic 'No" on both counts.

Still, in my humble opinion, there is one answer that is more correct than almost any other, and that is what the reader thinks; what the reader experiences at the moment of perception or reflection. When it becomes the combined expression, a truly dialogical encounter--is what is striven for.

That is the essential correct intrepretation. So why do I try to explain my work at all? Since artists sometimes have a difficult time explaining or understanding their own work, perhaps I shouldn't even try. Yet sometimes I am misunderstood in my intentions and purpose. After all, the artist's work is an objective manifestation of an inward and subjective process. The artist may not have insight always. Still, other people like to think they know what the subjectivity is--but they are sometimes standing outside of it. (In dialogue they may glimpse it). So they think I am a certain thing or this or that. Those are categories, but I see myself as merely a poet and a mystic. (Hopefully tehse are more correct categories!) For example, I may be writing as much about spiritual love as physical love when I talk about the goddess.

In addition to all of my later training in my various fields and education, I write also from a mystical tradition. These would be my early years as a young man when I was a recognized mystic in a community of like minded believers, which for better or worse, made a stamp on my consciousness. (Also my later years in a different tradition). For me, communion with the transcendent Other is both a physical and spiritual existence. It began there in those early years but evolved in the mystical experience until the concrete became particular and back again as self and non self morphed and changed again and again. And as much as sometimes I sought to quiet the mystical, or to limit it it with rationality, the mystical message and ways of connection are still there and undeniable.

So, for lack of any further analysis, I felt compelled to place the following description upon my poetry pages today. So,for those of you who are interested, and from whatever perspective I am writing from--right now; this is what my poetry means to me--at this historical moment, and from my own unique vision. I need YOU as my dear readers to complete it. I need you to approach it as Other, and see what it means to you. I hope at least, whatever YOU find my poetry to mean, that it will always inspire you to reach higher. That is my only goal. I am all for dispelling ignorance, raising tolerance, for the freedom to be, and for the power of love over hate.
--T.K.

About the Nature of my Poetry:

My poetry celebrates the power of the unbridled feminine goddess in the world. In my poetry I also attempt to express ideas that reflect dialectical and dialogical themes of historical and interpersonal relations as we move beyond personal development (the ego) to the larger collective of social mind in the world.

I hope you like my poems. Many of them admire women (or the importance of femininity), as I believe there is a goddess in every woman. These are the qualities that she has learned about, the messages from her unique culture and history that are positive, and the idealizations that help her become the woman she is always meant to be! (I am not the only one to say this. I have been inspired by books about the goddess by Jean Bolen, my mentor Christine Downing, and Miranda Shaw). Despite this I believe there are powerful messages for men in my poems too, and this may include the appreciation of the anima as a historical force in their own existence, as well as helping them to appreciate all the women in their lives.