About the Poems - DG
About the Poems
by Dean Gorman How do you wonder about workers? I am a worker, but never at a Plaid Pantry (convenience stores in Portland, OR). What is the active mind doing when it scans condoms and energy drinks? What memories? I wanted to be a worker in love. I read a Joe Wenderoth poem in which he feels his face gives the wrong impression. I thought about my face and decided it gave exactly the right impression. Is that vanity? “How I Learned to Float Away From Windows” really hurt. I had wanted it to be long but just couldn’t keep writing. And sometimes constriction can hurt too. There is something about speed. Getting someplace before you realize you had left the last one. I want that. I want it in my poetry as well as my life. And if you’re trying hard to stay somewhere long enough, sometimes you have to say it twice: everything, everything. Anais Ninn had more than a few nooners with Henry Miller in the early 30’s in Paris, but their words were better than any sex they ever had. “The New New Instinctivism” is collaged from the letters these two wrote each other.