[New-Poetry] “What is your work about?”

[Bob Grumman]

JforJames at aol.com wrote:
>
> http://www.gtweekly.com/10-25-07-/something-like-a-poem-4
> Something Like a Poem  | Print |   E-mail 
> Written by Dan Gerber    
> Wednesday, 24 October 2007 
>
> The most common and certainly the most difficult question I might be 
> asked by a stranger on an airplane is, “What is your work about?” It’s 
> a conundrum for any artist. And I suspect the one single quality that 
> may peg one as an artist—as opposed to, say, a craftsman—may be the 
> artist’s inability to form a satisfactory answer.
>
> I could say it’s about the process of discovering what it’s about. And 
> that would be honest. I could quote William Faulkner and say, “it’s 
> about the human heart in conflict with itself.” And that would be 
> honest too.
>
> What my poems are about is
>
I'd make that "What my poems are about is is."

To expand, here are my preliminary thoughts about Gerber's question:

What are my poems about?  I'd rather say what they are:

Voyages into the workings of the English Language, and--often--past it, 
into mathematics
and/or the explicitly visual..

Mines whose explosions are intended to multiply those stepping on them 
vividly and
pleasurably into Manywhere-at-Once.

Attempts intensely to capture the moods conveyed by land, sea, sky, and 
what humans
make of them.

Puzzles whose solutions will feel both right and deeply rewarding to 
their solvers.

What they are not:

Sermons laying out how governments should function, and individuals act.

Descriptions of the little things that happen in everybody's life 
intended to warm those
encountering them into friendship with the poems' so-wonderfully-human 
author.

--Bob G.
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