The Aurorean
Editor: Cynthia
Brackett-Vincent
Spring/Summer 2012
Volume XVII, Issue I
Encircle Publications
ISSN: 1521-8376
70 Pages
$11.00
Review by Dennis Daly
This issue of the
Aurorean presents imagistic droplets from the natural world so pellucid and
bright in their artistry that the pieces of the included poets seem to gain
relief and bloom out on virtually every page. And yet these poetic pieces
seem to complement one another in almost an organic interconnected way. Either
this editor has sold his soul for a sorcerer’s stone, or something else is
going on here.
Consider this snippet
from the history of physics. In the nineteenth century a scientific experiment
was developed by Thomas Young, which seemed to prove that light is a wave-like
phenomenon. In his Double Slit Experiment Young allowed light to enter through
an open hole on one screen to shine onto a second screen with two slits. Beyond
the second screen was a wall. When one slit was covered up, the light entered
and the illumination on the wall was predictable. But when both slits were open
the pattern of the light projection clearly showed a series of light and dark
bands. The only rational explanation for these bands was wave interference.
Thus light must be made up of waves. So far so good!
Then Albert Einstein
came along with his photoelectric effect proving that light is made up of
photons or particles, not waves. Yet Young’s experiment still works. Okay, and
what’s the point, you may well ask.
Apparently photons know
when the second slit is open and are thus conscious and act accordingly, or,
alternatively, fast moving information gets processed by these particles and
they duly position themselves as probability waves dictates.
Back to the
Aurorean. Am I imagining poetic roots cutting through their appointed
pages seeking nourishment even as I read? In the poem Photons by Llyn Clague
the music of poetry is described as packets or particles of inspiration that
run the show,
my impulses to poetry
flow beneath the
depthless sky,
blue by day, at night
alive with suns,
and the dry cave of
self…
I especially like the
metaphor of the cave, where anxieties are like bats squeaking as the photons of
poetry shoot through the atomic gaps of our troglodyte selves.
In Meteor Shower by
Nancy Compton Williams,
Bits of midnight sky,
heated to luminosity,
prepare the eye for
dawn,
for light on casks
of honey-colored hay…
Like the photons these
waves of meteors lay the very vault of heaven at our feet. They know where they
are expected to be in both reality and fancy and don’t disappoint.
The poem Sonnet for a
Small Rock gets right to the point,
Who says inanimate
objects
don’t have sentience,
for example this
small rock from a
creek, which I picked up
(with its intaglio of a
primitive fish)
to keep on my desk?
The poet continues
attributing feelings and mortality to the now precious rock. Human perception,
according to this poet, possesses the power of imbuing consciousness. A
connection is made and information is somehow passed from animate human to
inanimate thing.
B.Z. Niditch’s poem
entitled Landscapes seems to give the words of poetry a life of their own. They
expect things. The poet explains,
Folds his mellow notes
Slowly pronounces
His last sentence
In a foreign tongue
Expecting to be
translated.
In Gayle Elen Harvey’s
airy, elegant poem, In that Space, she asks the key question begged in the
natural world by the process of death and regeneration. The poet says,
Vacant, now, the dream
song of that yellow bird
may outlive you like a
prayer
of one syllable.
Bells are breaking open
with a clean sound
that’s weightless—
Who is listening in
that space
between?
The ability of a fresh
water muscle to study the universe is commented on by Craig W. Steele in his
curious poem Heelsplitters. In this meditation the poet touches on uncertainty
and existence (or non-existence). He says,
…Shoe-horned inside
each
calcified confection
lies a creature, confounding
to both Heisenberg and
Schrodinger: existing; not;
re-emerging to study
the universe with its tongue-body,
cast from the mold of
its world like quantum Jell-O.
A little poetic gem by
Charles H. Harper called It shows how unsuccessful we humans are in naming the
source of consciousness in our world. The poem’s humble title becomes a
powerful metaphor of our ignorance,
It is
not about you
or me—It is about
earth, space, mystery
& our small place
in It.
Our very breath adds to
this metaphor of human understanding in Geoffrey A. Landis piece entitled One
Breath Poem. Its vividness equals the best of imagist poetry. It ends this way,
…it is enough
to say
something,
even if it is only
to praise
cherry blossoms.
Like particles of shooting light these poems surely
illuminate the artistic ability of the individual poets chosen by this editor.
But looked at a different way, in their plurality, they also overwhelm with
their interconnected mystery and make this issue of the Aurorean a must read
for all who seek to understand the nature and the wonder of poetry.
