About the Poems - MW
About the Poems
by Max Winter The poems with dimensions in their titles are meant to be description of photographs. I began them because I wanted to write something that meant, really, not much more than what it said—but would nevertheless have an effect on the person who read it, if only to get them to experience something directly and without interference. Also, being clear about something—anything—was really pleasurable to me, almost like a relief. Not that my earlier work hasn’t been clear, but the clarity’s different. At a certain point you bring back samples from places so deep within yourself that you almost wonder what the benefit of their display is. Once they are revealed in a poem, they seem like punch lines to very long jokes that haven’t been featured. So these other poems are and were a way of laying things out on the surface a bit more. As translators frequently say in their introductory notes, if there have been any errors in the translation from my head to the poem, I take full responsibility—though I don’t think there will be too much to be responsible for. I checked the poems many times to make sure they were accurate…