In the pref­ace to “Men, Women and Ghosts,” the author out­lines the expan­sive def­i­n­i­tion of “sto­ries” used in this col­lec­tion, encom­pass­ing nar­ra­tive poems, tales divid­ed into scenes, and pieces where nature and inan­i­mate objects play cen­tral roles. A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the pref­ace is ded­i­cat­ed to explor­ing the poten­tial of ‘vers libre‘ (free verse), inspired by the rhyth­mic sim­i­lar­i­ties between poet­ry and music, notably sparked by the com­po­si­tions of Debussy. The author describes exper­i­ments with mim­ic­k­ing the move­ments of nat­ur­al objects and music through poet­ry, specif­i­cal­ly in “A Rox­bury Gar­den” and “The Cre­mona Vio­lin,” aim­ing to cap­ture the essence of motion and sound with­in the flu­id struc­ture of free verse.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing exper­i­ment men­tioned is attempt­ing to emu­late the move­ments in Stravin­sky’s “Three Pieces ‘Grotesques’, for String Quar­tet,” which the author notes has been acknowl­edged by musi­cians as accu­rate in trans­la­tion. These endeav­ors under­score a belief in the untapped poten­tial of free verse for poet­ic expres­sion.

The pref­ace also intro­duces the con­cept of “poly­phon­ic prose,” a form that strays from tra­di­tion­al prose in its vocal and dra­mat­ic qual­i­ties. Through this form, char­ac­ters are giv­en a vivid­ness akin to roles in a play, embed­ded with­in a poet­ic frame­work. This approach is high­light­ed as unique­ly suit­ed to dra­mat­ic poet­ry due to its capac­i­ty to enliv­en char­ac­ters while main­tain­ing a lyri­cal deco­rum.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the author shares inno­va­tions in cap­tur­ing the essence of places and moments, focus­ing on the visu­al aspects such as col­or, light, and shape, devoid of rela­tion­al con­text to empha­size their sen­so­ry beau­ty. This tech­nique was part­ly inspired by the visu­al pat­terns observed in aquar­i­ums, lead­ing to the cre­ation of “An Aquar­i­um” and influ­enced by John Gould Fletcher’s “Lon­don Excur­sion.”

The back­drop of the ongo­ing Euro­pean war is acknowl­edged as an inevitable influ­ence on the poems, though it is approached indi­rect­ly. The col­lec­tion aims to explore the vast pos­si­bil­i­ties of poet­ic expres­sion, from the rhythm and motion of free verse to the dra­mat­ic poten­tial of poly­phon­ic prose, seek­ing to push bound­aries and explore new facets of sto­ry­telling through poet­ry.