To World

In To World, poems interrogate everything: nature, society, and thought itself, with no prejudice or even principle. In other words, they don’t follow any rule, tradition, or discipline; they are decidedly critical. Thought is not reduced to philosophical, ethical, religious, political, or aesthetic interpretations. Rather, we are before thought in its totality, unwilling to recognize borders  –  although never in a pure state, not falling into speculation, into thinking just for thinking’s sake. Thought is always related to ­experience, both personal and collective, and above all, emotion. It never once stops being thought through image, that is to say, lyrical. This poetry speaks of poetry; it takes it all on: the objective and subjective, the real and imagined, I and other. It ventures into virgin territory, on the outskirts of romanticism, realism, symbolism, and the avant-garde. Always a model of rebelliousness and freedom, a lesson in devotion and rigor, Gelman’s work places him among today’s best poets.