“I like . . . those pockets of genuine strangeness within nations. Yet those are being emptied, turned inside out, made to conform—in the interest of what?”

Across the sea at Alexandria,
Shallow and glittering, a single shroud-
Shaped cloud had stolen, leaving as it paused

Two rooms, rather, one flight up, half-seen
Through the gilt palm fronds of rue Messaline.

Sparse furnishings: work table, lamp, two chairs,

Come, try this exercise:
Focus a beam,
Emptied of thinking, outward through shut eyes

There is a city whose fair houses wizen 
In a strict web of streets, of waterways 
In which the clock tower gurgles and sways, 

The idea for the following feature evolved from an interview in which David Jackson reported that, using a Ouija board, he and the poet James Merrill had contacted Truman Capote in the afterlife

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.