Wallflowers: a Lecture on Poetry

by Michael Donaghy

"Any act of communication begins with imagining oneself in the place of potential readers or listeners in order to anticipate one's effect. Agreed? It could be said, then, that the poet equals the reader, because poets are themselves readers in the tradition of poetry, because poetry is in itself a way of reading in that tradition, and because poets are the first (and sometimes, sadly, the only) readers and critics of what they've written. Conversely, reading is a form of sensitive readers give themselves up to the poet for the duration of the poem."

48 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

Michael Donaghy (May 24, 1954 – September 16, 2004) was an award-winning New York poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985.

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