The limits of our language constitute the limits of our world. If there exists understanding beyond the capacities of language, such knowledge has no functional relevance. The only world available for us to know is the world that we experience and discursively construct. Thus, what we deem reality is nothing more than an ever-shifting social contract; as our assumptions and aspirations change, so do the conditions of our being. Choice transfigures reality.
When we approach a work of art, we must consider, first and foremost, the vision it effects. If all belief is ultimately a fiction by which we ascribe purpose through some combination of social convention and personal conviction, meaning itself is nothing more than an interpretation by which we choose to order our lives. At the center of each work of art rests possibility – possibility for being, for meaning, for reality itself. It falls to us, as actors in the process by which we determine understanding, to identify those visions of meaning most meaningful to us.
Unfortunately, much of what passes for poetry today has lost its capacity to make and re-make our world. It is not visionary and it is not daring. Despite the tremendous diversity of contemporary poetics, many of today’s poems tend toward either the descriptive or the conceptual. In either case, such poetry proves reductive; it obscures the infinite complexity against which we shore our very being.
The pieces selected for this issue of Literary Laundry seek to underscore the intellectually transformative power of the word. Whereas “Tapestries” reflects upon the ironies and passions that animate existential estrangement, “Smoke” considers the instability of a self that always exists somewhere between choice and possibility. While “Oedipus” challenges us to consider the demands and risks of greatness, “Honeyvoiced” confronts the ability of language to open both meaning and memory.
Whereas “Stargazer” presents us with a world that is at once familiar and foreign, inviting us to brave the unknown winds that necessarily follow any act of exploration, “Night Sounds” provides a reflection on the importance of language in constructing both identity and personal narrative. “Wedding” explores the chaos – both linguistic and emotional – that accompanies a moment of existential confirmation. In contrast, “Cosmology” reflects upon the seemingly mundane in order to illustrate the subtle but overwhelming nuance of ordinary experience.
“Song from the Deranged, an Introduction,” provides an ode to the Shiva-like power of words to destroy and create, transforming man into ideas that transcend both time and distance. “The Beginnings of Sobriety” asks the opposite question: how can long-past ideas or experiences transcend time? How can the words we spoke, the actions we took, haunt our future selves?
“Opening Chords” engages the expressions of evening, as it lyrically reflects upon songbirds and the melodies of day. As if in response, “Morning Insomnia” focuses on the freshness of a single moment – the unstructured, tangential language of a mind residing somewhere between dreaming and consciousness.
Poetry dramatizes the linguistic process by which we construct and communicate realities. By so exploring the capacities of our wonder, these poems offer us such wonder as a choice.