Dolphin

I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself—
to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction,
an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting
my eyes have seen what my hand did.

Winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, The Dolphin was controversial from the beginning: many of t...