This notebook is a small, slow reading room. It is not a magazine, and it does not run a submissions queue. It is closer to a letter written to no one and everyone — a place to put down what a poem did while the impression is still sharp, before the reasons arrive and tidy it up.

The title of this page is “About this notebook,” but the page itself is not a statement of purpose so much as an invitation to walk through the door and look around. The shelves are irregular, the light is uneven, and the books have been read once, twice, and sometimes never finished. That is the kind of room it is.

How are these posts chosen? They are not chosen, exactly. They are gathered — the way a poem gathers its images. I read widely, and almost everything I read leaves a residue. The residue becomes a note, and the note becomes a post only when it insists. Some posts are written in an afternoon; others have been sitting in a file for months, waiting for a phrase to unlock them.

What can a reader expect? Irregularity, first of all. Posts come when they are ready, and they are not trimmed to fit a schedule. Some are long meditations; some are three lines. There are no categories, because categories are for libraries, and this is a room. You will find notes on individual poems, on the craft of the chapbook, on the way a line breaks when it is read aloud, and on the odd moment a poem decides to leave the desk and become a letter.

I write about what I am reading, but I also write about what I am writing. The two are inseparable. A poem you are working on is a question you are living, and the books that help answer it are the most important ones. So you will find, mixed in with the notes on others, notes on my own work: where it is stuck, what it is trying to do, and why a particular image keeps returning.

The name “One Gold Bead” comes from Williams, but it means something particular to me: a bead is a unit of attention. It does not carry meaning by itself; it is a node on a string. These posts are beads. They are not meant to be strung together in a single necklace — although they can be — but they are meant to be touched, turned over, and eventually passed through.

If you are new here, a piece of advice: read the posts aloud, even if only to yourself. The sentences are made to be sounded. And do not feel obligated to read everything. A room is best experienced by following your eye, not by inventory. Sit down with one post, then leave. That is the ritual.

Finally, this notebook is a living thing. It changes as I change, and I am grateful to be writing it. Thank you for reading.