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

[JforJames at aol.com]

The makings of a manifesto, Bob. And aren't all manifestos poems?
 
But why can't poets try to be government's nag? Certainly they have
as much right as anyome and more insight than most.
Finnegan
 
In a message dated 10/28/2007 5:18:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:


 
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.







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