Epistrophy

<p class=ql-align-justify><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Epistrophy</em></strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is a serial work comprising seventy poems that explore poetics in light of its resistance to an authoritarian State. At present with humanity's future in doubt we may be facing the end of history which can only cast its backward glances because it believes in the future. Meanwhile the current regime employs widespread chaos to mask its repressive endgame. But if history ends with no future to speak of where can we look for a guarantor of meaning especially the meaning of existence?</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>        </span><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Epistrophy</em></strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> argues that The gift of life is the search for meaning / not the presumption that meaning exists. Many of these poems cast poetics and the State as antagonists in our struggle for a democratic society. While the emphasis throughout is on poetics there are passages dealing with the current regime. Those who choose to ignore bad history / are destined to make even more of it. The practice of poetry exemplifies a peaceable alternative to state-sponsored violence and repression. To the gross if constant abuse of language - which degrades the commons and stunts public speech - poems are built on their material base and the diction best suited to tell the truth. No time for a tyrant's lies. Rather poems function as credibility-discerning-and -affirming structures designed as Blake says to cast out falsehood forever.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>        </span><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Epistrophy</em></strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> is also the title of the Thelonious Monk composition I was listening to when I first began work on this book. The tune's verses with their midline caesurae made me think of couplets. ... Best to read slowly - and aloud because sound and rhythm influence how a given line or sentence becomes available to meaning. Yet Critics disdain what escapes them leading to another death by interpretation. In other words does the total syntax of the poem support whatever claims you make for it? Once a book is in your hands it is truly in your hands. For my part I try to translate my thoughts as clearly as possible within the constraints of the work under construction.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>        </span><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><em>Epistrophy</em></strong><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> as I noted earlier is a serial work. The poems in the series are linked by their internal logic as well as chronology. The book is the sum of the resonances that result. To grand narratives I prefer to focus on the thoughts that arise in the course of daily life. In the end my hope for my readers is that they make </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>these</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> poems their own. That comes from repeated readings which I encourage by writing to be re-read.</span></p><p></p>