Gerald Hopman presents his poetry of some 50 years in One Book as being led by Ignorance, questions and the rewards of imagination. The ignorance (or lack of knowledge) dates back to a hardly uncommon question in youth that echoes perhaps the first mumblings of the human voice. A cloudless night.a sky dotted with an infinitude of stars..endless space..and with awe fear, wonder and a voice measured in tones radically different from his usual New York-Bronx street patter, a young man asks--- what part am I of what I see? So began an adventure not merely to solve the riddle but also to question the questioning-its source. What of this-- call it a voice within-- that urged-no demanded-to lead the poet and the poems year after year with the assurance somehow-create to learn After poetically reviewing nearly every aspect of experience and exercising language through imagination to accommodate the revealing of even a clue-those questions of some 50 years ago still tease-of course, Hopman advises. But oh the joy in the scramble, he adds. Some lines from poems in the individual 18 books uniting One Book, hopefully remark that joy, and the poet's continuing the adventure.
