"A poem is never about one thing. .. . You want
it to be as complicated as your feelings."
That from an article in the March 29 issue of the
"New York Times Magazine," entitled "Galaxies Inside His Head" and subtitled "Race and Identity in the Poems of Terrance Hayes."
What Hayes appears to be suggesting is that he packs
his poetry with multiple issues – and perhaps not in a linear fashion.
Like a good wine, complexity is critical.
That's one way of looking at the notion of "more than one
thing."
But there is an alternative. Poems, and arguably
stories, are chiefly about more than one thing because readers interpret the
same work differently and not because of anything the author says.
