About the Poems - ABF
About the Poems
by Alice B. Fogel These “house” poems are from a series attempting to explore what happens—formally, physically, psychologically, emotionally, and even syntactically—when people live together for a long time. We overlap, we retreat, we finish each other’s sentences, we get confused and annoyed, we get some perspective, we have multiple, conflicting desires. I don’t have it all figured out yet, but the house may be a magical realist character as much as an anthropomorphized member of the, uh, household, for which it has a kind of impatient affection. In some ways it is a perceived manifestation of its inhabitants even as it is itself, or at least thinks it is. In this way the house is just like us, dually or anamorphically embodying our own point of view and feelings as well as the projected subjectivity of those we have a close relationship with.