© Russ Coughlin

SIMON PERCHIK

Since I don’t begin a poem with any pre-conception, it’s natural that the images at hand creep into and guide the work. Stars, suns, moons, waves, sand, trees, leaves are the symbols I find both powerful and appropriate for the ideas that eventually will emerge.

Moreover, my work has almost no narrative or exposition. I leave that to prose. The power, if it comes at all, comes from those primordial symbols so prevalent on the East End.

And perhaps that’s why I and my neighbors are writing. To get it all down before Eden itself is tainted.