Laura Klinkon

Kitchen Abrasives Laura Klinkon

Many of my poems reflect the effort to know or to build some structure around things or ideas that I haven't yet figured out. It's like E. M. Forster who said, "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" One could also ask, How do I know what I'll say until I think it? or ... How do I know what I'll say until I write it?

Er...another place my poems may be coming from: confusion. In general, confusion is a starting point for many poems. Perhaps especially the poems that are humorous or trying to be. After all, confusion is funny. Imagine someone who is wearing a heavy hat in summer. He's dying to take it off, because he's hot. But somehow any place or surface nearby that could accommodate the hat, doesn't seem at all appropriate. Certainly, not on the St. John's Wort bush beside the veranda! You can see him running around brandishing his hat in search of a place to put it, sweating and swearing in his disconcerting conundrum.

In the present collection much of the confusion is expressed with regard to things rather than people, sometimes in a weirdly exaggerated way. Perhaps not raucously funny. But...gently abrasive?