Visitations: Poems

In his preface toVisitations, Mr. Whitt writes, "Poetry is the poet. Etymologically, the word means 'maker,' but what the poet ultimately makes is not so much the poem as himself. The poet is his own audience-thoughothers eavesdrop-and each poem that he is moved to write speaks to him with a new voice, one that he has never heard before. Thus goes the poet, from poem to poem, from rebirth to rebirth, constantly recreating himself in a perpetualfuite en avant." The poems in this little book, which were composed over a period of fifteen years, are arranged thematically, not chronologically, and are not meant to trace any discernable evolution, but rather to show the many metamorphoses that the Muse works upon the poet.