I met the poet Craig Arnold only once. It was late February or early March of this year. I was at a coffee shop in Salt Lake City, I was suffering from the hypersomonlence of adderall withdrawal, and I had just taken a hit of acid. What the fuck was the point, not just of being alive, but of anything? I had been thinking just as much over the past year. Indeed, I did more than just think about it the year before, but that is another story and it is boring to talk about. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said to my friend Josh as we drove to the coffee shop. ‘I feel like I can’t relate to anyone. I feel like I’ve lost my ability to write. Basically, I feel like blowing my fucking head off.’ ‘Take this tab and think about things,’ Josh told me.

And there we were drinking our coffees and reading when I noticed my former poetry teacher Rebecca Lindenberg standing next to a slender man with a shaved head at the register. “Rebecca,” I said. She turned and smiled. We exchanged pleasantries, then she turned her face to the man next to her and introduced me. ‘This is my partner, Craig.’ I knew who he was. We shook hands. I read he had won the Yale prize, though I had not read any of his poems. …more