7. Us New Yorkers tend to be a funny lot -- we like to have funny things in our poems -- but your poems seem to allude to often earnest belief systems, even those of religion ("A dead elm flowers in winter as the saint's remains pass" from the first page of "Verbali") or even the prospect of a return to nature ("Scope out the multiplicity of a swelling nature") and to a "oneness" with the body. How would you contrast these types of language in your writing? Is there some sort of heretical aspect to your use of comedy, or is there, conversely, some sort of "spiritual" in your use of sayings from established belief systems?