surfaces and beyond

Looking, and writing about looking: looking at surfaces and beyond them, at what is depicted and what is hidden in shadow, at how a transient chemistry of light may be fixed in colour and words.

*       *       *

The passage is from a poetry newsletter to which I subscribe and refers to a recently published book of poems. Yet I wonder if it couldn't be taken as a definition of all poetry - or art at large - and of the craft of those who look at things with a poetic eye.

Deep-sea fish that I am though, my interest is always in that beyond, in what is hidden in the shadows, there where the eyes become redundant and the other senses prevail.

What's inside counts indeed.