For an apt metaphor for drilling to the core of any of us, from The American Poetry Review, January / February 2016, in an article about Moss by Laurence Lieberman. If I have gathered the title incorrectly, please message me for the correction. Obviously, I should buy the book.

from Poem of Self / by Stanley Moss

Putting his back into the drill, as if the tree were marble,
he quickly passed through American history,
knot and counter-knot, to the age of Mozart,
through the Baroque, through Shakespeare grain