I have been immersing myself in the poems of Joe Bolton, which is a hard thing to do because it is a hard place to live. His work is stunning, a combination of great formal and linguistic gifts and tremendous emotional vulnerability. It's hard to fathom that he wrote everything he would ever write before he was 30 years old.

When I need to find my way back to the lyric, I read Joe's work. Here's a link to a few examples.