Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Three
November- December 2025
The Virtuous Writer, poems by Edward Caruso.
The Virtuous Writer
When the virtuous writer tried to invent himself there were no PCs, so paper
proved the surface par excellence. Many sheets were stolen from various
administrative offices of employment, dreaded for their mind-numbing
clerical duties. Screens soon came into vogue, but after 35 years and back on
paper again, the virtuous writer could only look back and reinvent himself
because his earlier selves are as intangible as those early pieces he destroyed
(he hopes to destroy all later pieces as well, to spare the world). Since starting
out he has pursued several adventures and escaped the temptation to settle in
suburbs that would confirm his non-presence.
While composing the first lines of this piece, the virtuous writer peered at
the empty lines ahead and contemplated what could have been written to fill them.
But in an act of restraint he chose to say all he had to say on this page. He
preferred to listen to the sounds of nearby pens scratching their owners’
signature text onto paper milled from forests of indifferent shores.
When he is not writing autobiographical pieces, the virtuous writer wishes to
live far from where he wrote his first words, and to dream himself into a majestic
crane that judiciously hunts falcons.
Fires
Our lives?
What we had …
Children?
To abandon them
We must be mad
Laughter
Dance
Dance
Without fear
© Edward Caruso
Edward Caruso has been published by A Voz Limpia, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, ‘La Bottega della Poesia’ (La Repubblica, Italy), Burrow, Communion, Kalliope X, Mediterranean Poetry, Meniscus, Melbourne Poets Union, n-Scribe, Right Now, P76, StylusLit, TEXT, Unusual Work and Well-Known Corners: Poetry on the Move. Since 2024 he has co-judged the Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize. In 2025, his third collection of poems, What Distance Means, was published by Hybrid Publishers. In October 2025, he featured on 3CR’s Spoken Word program.