One Book

About the Book

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.

About the Author

Gerald Hopman—Born, raised in the Bronx, New York, Hopman now resides in the Los Angeles suburb, North Hills, sharing house and home with companion, collaborator, confidante, wife, artist Norma Jean Squires. Admitting to unspectacular careers in journalism and the motion picture industry as well as limited formal education, he presents the nearly 50 years of poetry in One Book as being led by ignorance, questions and the rewards of imagination. After a brief but encouraging association with the Eventorium Muse group in New York mid-1960’s Hopman withdrew from the poetry community recognizing his goals and methods were and would be not merely outside the main stream or side streams but all streams. In reviewing the themes and structure of his work Hopman has come to see how the totality of his poetry can be taken as an effort to wed at least some basics of traditional religious mysticism (particularly Jewish) and some basics of very modern science (particularly cosmology). No, but perhaps unintentionally close he advises. Let the lines decide he proposes.