"Something Like a Poem" by Dan Gerber
In his essay, Gerber grips the reader's attention by exposing the feeling of an artist towards the art. One question that I am always asked as a poet is what my poetry is about, and like many poets before me, I do not have straight forward answer that pretends to know what my poetry is about. My poetry is like a discovery process, and I hope that the reader will discover the meaning just as I would as I read the poem after its production. And this is serious. I know I can control the craft of the poem, tweak lines, rhythm and other stylistic features, but I will let the poem clear its own ground. Sometimes the process is not about clearing ground at all, but maybe about forestation or a process I am beginning to understand as some form of "covering" or "layering". Often, when I write a poem about certain themes,I prefer the "covering/layering". I find some of the themes intrusive even to the poem, so there is usually a veer and serve of the poetic lines as they avoid the inevitable collision with thematic content that befits covering/layering.
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