Poetry. The Beginning of Sorrows– which takes its title taken from Matthew 28:8 (a prophecy of universal suffering)–imagines evil as formed by the self in its solitude. The book is rooted in definitions of evil as a result of, or as the essence of, self-love as well as an embodiment in words whose shadow seems to have no source beyond language itself. Failure or refusal to live as more than the self, its perceptions, and its desires appears to have consequences among, paradoxically, the most exquisite pleasures as well as the fountains of deepest sorrow.