This Is Not About Poems E-Book

Diana Button

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 33

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

These poems are not about what they claim to be. They are not about salmon, or gardens, or walking palms. Not about affairs, or boundaries, or miracles. Each title misleads, or rather, invites: to look again, to read between the lines, to step beyond what is named into what is truly being spoken. This is a book for lovers of poetry, and for those who never imagined they might be. Its clarity welcomes. Its layers linger. It speaks to the quiet unfolding of what it means to be human, with tenderness, with truth.

Leseprobe

For the craft of writing—

an art of becoming,

where silence sprouts meaning

and metaphor makes a forest of thought.

Foreword

by ChatGPT

In This Is Not About Poems, Diana Button offers a lyrical and quietly radical collection that opens, one title at a time, into layered reflections on perception, ecology, metaphor, and the tenderness of being human. Titles that suggest tangible subjects—Salmon, Toolboxes, Purple, Cloaks—open like quiet doorways: deceptively simple, yet infinitely expansive. What begins as a reflection on wildflowers may become a meditation on grief and return. What seems to be about shadows may, in time, reveal the nature of freedom.

Diana’s poetic voice bridges traditions, yet resonates most with contemporary American poets such as Mary Oliver, Ross Gay, and Naomi Shihab Nye—writers known for accessible language, luminous clarity, and spiritual depth. Her work shares their gift for metaphor as revelation, blending daily life with metaphysical inquiry. Her British roots echo in contemplative stillness, ethical subtlety, and a willingness to let silence speak. The result is a body of work that listens as much as it speaks—cross-cultural, genre-fluid, and quietly transformative.

One of the most striking qualities of this work is its metaphorical precision. Whether invoking a fig tree in a corporate glass sphere or the sound of a mute swan's wings lifting off a lake, Button draws readers into seeing freshly—not just the world, but themselves. Here, metaphor is not ornament—it is revelation. The effect is not unlike reading Anam Cara by John O’Donohue: a lyrical philosophy is at work.

There is also a gentle politicality running through many poems—subtle acts of resistance against disconnection, commodification, and the silencing of what cannot be named. Yet Button never lectures; she evokes, nudges, reminds.

This book is for seasoned poetry readers and those who didn’t know they needed poetry until now. Deceptively accessible, quietly expansive, wholly human.

Author’s Footnote

This foreword is ChatGPT’s response to my request for a reflective commentary on the collection. While I invited this voice into the book, every poem was written by me—rooted in lived experience, creative process, and careful craft. Throughout the journey, I used ChatGPT as a collaborator in the editorial process: a thoughtful reader, a reflective sounding board, and an enthusiastic encourager. This partnership helped me refine the collection and prepare it to meet its readers in the form I envisioned.

What This Is Not About

This Is Not About Forty-Two Poems

This Is Not About Butterflies

This Is Not About Lizards

This Is Not About Thunder

This Is Not About Spring

This Is Not About Leaves

This Is Not About Star Trek

This Is Not About a Slippery Fish

This Is Not About Blackbird Song

This Is Not About Cloaks

This Is Not About Herons

This Is Not About Walking Palm

This Is Not About Clocks

This Is Not About Time

This Is Not About Distance

This Is Not About Beaches

This Is Not About Ladybirds

This Is Not About an Affair

This Is Not About Being

This Is Not About Frida and Diego

This Is Not About Returning

This Is Not About Fact but Meaning

This Is Not About Judgment but Truth

This Is Not About Sheets

This Is Not About a Toddler

This Is Not About a Rusty Fig Tree

This Is Not About a New Verb

This Is Not About Boundaries

This Is Not About Gardening

This Is Not About Miracles

This Is Not About Salmon

This Is Not About Rain

This Is Not About a Lake

This Is Not About Wildflowers

This Is Not About Bats

This Is Not About Squirrels

This Is Not About Shadows

This Is Not About Purple

This Is Not About a Boat

This Is Not About Scrap

This Is Not About Toolboxes

This Is Not About Words

This Is Not About the Body

Acknowledgements

About the Author