Contributors’ notes at the back of a literary quarterly or toward the beginning of a glossy magazine can sometimes be among the most entertaining reading in the entire volume.

Or they can be among the most deadly, as I’ve been thinking while scanning those in the Paris Review, where they run along the line of so-and-so is the author of the new insert-title-here book of poetry or fiction. It’s so one-dimensional.

Don’t know about you, but I definitely want to know what makes a writer tick – unique details help. Hopefully, something more than where they’re also teaching.

Yes, I know as writers we’re all hustling our books, but ultimately, we’re the brand, like it or not. (God, it hurts to admit that, but it’s true.)

The celebrity Proust Questionnaire at the closing of Vanity Fair magazine issues is a great prompt.

So here I am, pushing a whole lineup of volumes while hoping at least one of them jumps out at you and makes you get it, free or at a price – yes, I’m shy about asking for money – but still!

This matter of self-identity came into play with my poetry collection Hamlet, a village of gargoyles, which built on exercises where I found it much easier to say who I’m not than who I am.

So here I am, with a few potential contributor notes I may have sent out:

• As a youth, Jnana admired crystals grown from supersaturated solutions. Deep blue copper sulfate was his favorite.
• Jnana has found landscapes evolving into an awareness of spirituality and space, as well as settlement and wildlife.
• In addition to reading and writing, Jnana enjoys hiking and camping, birding, New England contradancing, classical music, opera, jazz, visual arts, genealogy and history, theology, Quaker practice, homebrewing, and a cappella part-singing. If there were only more time, he contemplates.
• Jnana Hodson never expected a film literature course under Harry Geduld would influence his poetry as much as college writing class under poet Dick Allen. But it did: the clash of thesis and antithesis producing an unanticipated synthesis in reaction.
• When Jnana first began reading contemporary poetry (for pleasure, independent of classroom assignment), he sensed that often the poem existed as a single line or two, with the rest of the work as window dressing. Now he reads the Psalms much the same way, for the poem within the poem, or at least the nugget he is to wrestle with on this occasion. Psalm 81, for instance, has both “voice in thunder” and “honey from rock.”
• Elk move through Jnana’s mind, its memory, more as emblem and ideal than creature. He has not tasted elk flesh or stroked the fur. What he’s known has appeared only on the forest floor as track and scat – no ticks on the neck or patchy summer skin. That, and the winter encounters viewed from a distance.

While we’re at it, let’s ponder the faces on back dust jacket or cover.

How few seem like people I’d like to meet. How much anger, hatred, envy, darkness – brooding – comes through? How little serenity, how little joy? Multiplicity of personality. Just who am I? Who are you?  Empathy. Discomfort. All the rest.

Who are you in relation to all this?

Sometimes my own writing goes beyond anything I can explain. For instance:

• My Kinisi here at the Barn? Prompts, yes, if you want.
• But firing them into full blast?
• Much less igniting a conflagration?
• We do what we can, each one on the edge.
• I keep shooting what I think are some good ones at you, hoping someone will take it the next step.

Meanwhile, over the years:

• I’ve attempted to walk in the Light daily, though fallen far short.
• Ridden the uprising Spirit.
• Found silent meditation crucial to writing poetry.
• Uncovered 12 generations of my Hodgson ancestors.
• Returned unknowingly to the faith of those ancestors.
• Survived a shrinking profession to reach retirement.
• Sought an incandescent language.
• Still need a champion.
• Never taught creative writing.
• Found literary writing can resemble prayer.
• Am perhaps best known for my Mixmaster approach to poetry and fiction. Or maybe it was my radical history of Dover along with uncovering an alternative Christianity in the Quaker metaphors of Light and Seed
• Prefer a religion that relies on questions more than answers
• Think we’re confused enough, already.
• Store bath towels in a basket.
• Wear reading glasses, more and more.
• Have become uncomfortable around smokers.
• Had hoped to reclaim my social activist witness, after years of journalistic neutrality.

Remember, you can find my works in the digital platform of your choice at Smashwords, the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers. You can also ask your public library to obtain them.