Parmenides in Minneapolis

<p>Parmenides in Minneapolis is a book-length sequence of poems which employ for the most part a 9-line stanza featuring a rhyme scheme [a-b-a-b-c-a-b-c-a] which is very roughly modeled on the logical structure of the argument presented in the ancient poetic fragments (untitled) of the pre-Socratic poet-philosopher Parmenides of Elea. This book is the first volume of a projected longer work which has the preliminary title of <em>Shield of Mnemosyne.</em></p><p></p><p><em>Parmenides in Minneapolis </em>is the outcome of a first encounter relatively late in life with the eponymous poet-philosopher from Elea (an ancient Greek city located in southern Italy near present-day Naples). Upon reading these ancient fragmentary writings I was immediately struck by their fusion of poetry and philosophy : a flinty adamantine quest for ultimate truth couched in a poetic speech of fabulous mythical dramatic intensity. Parmenides' narrated encounter with the fearsome awe-inspiring Goddess of the Sun driving her four horses - who leads him beyond an inherently fraudulent illusory human condition onto the Way of absolute Truth - quickly brought to mind Dante's parallel encounter with the immortal Beatrice in his <em>Divina Commedia</em>.</p><p></p><p>Parmenides' forthright quest aided by divine powers took place during an age of tumultuous change in his Mediterranean world. So in this work I attempt to yoke together thought and poetry metaphysics and politics in response to a sense of terrible upheaval and crisis - presenting an ominous threat to my own seemingly ordered civilized American world of democracy law and power. My poems plunge into a similar poetic idiom of judgement and imagination - yet yoked to my own ordinary local Minneapolis actuality tangled in a time of moral uncertainty and political corruption - of inescapable suffering and calamity. </p>