Kitchen Ink and its author
Most of the Kitchen Ink poems were written in one kitchen or another where I’ve lived over the years. Hypersphere is a linked collection of essays.
My name is Richard Tietjen (richard.tietjen at kitchen-ink dot org).
I think poetry captures snapshots, cross-sections of time and space that are more enduring than mere photographs. The dictum “Ideas only in things” has ruled my practice for the longest time. Lately, I’ve realized that poetry must assert imaginative realities that can’t quite be encompassed in ordinary language.
I took a BA in English at Amherst College where I studied with writers Robert Stone, William Pitt Root, and Anne Fessenden. For my thesis I wrote Forgotten Poems, several of which appear in Early poems.
After a number of years cutting down trees and building things from wood, I then worked as a programmer in the educational publishing industry for 20 years. In 2004 I devoted my energies to writing poems that have appeared in Caduceus, the Connecticut River Review, and on this Kitchen Ink website, (http://kitchen-ink.org). I read at many poetry events in New Haven and up the Connecticut Shoreline. I inhabit Guilford, CT where I practice both poetry and textual programming and belong to the Guilford Poets Guild, Shoreline Greenway Trail, and Guilford Peace Alliance.
Weblished: 9 January 2005, 10:57