The pre-Simulationist
Movement
Movement
Future home of the pre-Simulationist Magazine
The pre-Simuationist art and poetry movement has been in play for over
three years, beginning modestly on a tiny blog known as Gather back in
2006, when two poets started talking about how they felt postmodern
thought was officially dead and posthumanist thought appeared too
positivist and Frankensteinian for the world´s good. We´ve slowly but surely
been growing in size and strength since then.
The pre-Simuationist art and poetry movement has been in play for over
three years, beginning modestly on a tiny blog known as Gather back in
2006, when two poets started talking about how they felt postmodern
thought was officially dead and posthumanist thought appeared too
positivist and Frankensteinian for the world´s good. We´ve slowly but surely
been growing in size and strength since then.
 | We now claim over fifty members on our own | |
| blog site. | ||
| Collectively we´ve created hundreds of works | |
| of art and either published in the real world or posted online over a thousand poems. |
As we move forward......
We shall continue to develop new ways of looking at the world, human
identity, social connectivity in the age of the semantic web, how technology
changes language and consciousness, and above all, the phenomenon of
total immersive simulation, that seems to beckon humans into a
consensual dream or a nightmarish Platonic cave.
We shall continue to develop new ways of looking at the world, human
identity, social connectivity in the age of the semantic web, how technology
changes language and consciousness, and above all, the phenomenon of
total immersive simulation, that seems to beckon humans into a
consensual dream or a nightmarish Platonic cave.
The Winners of the First Annual pre-Simulationist Poetry Prize
Please join me in congratulating Smaragdus (First Prize), Barbary (Second
Prize) and Jan (Third Prize) for their superb poems found below with a brief
commentary by Edward Nudelman. There were over 20 poems submitted,
all of which excelled and made this a very 'close' decision, with many
poems vying for placement. In the end, in the final winnowing of my favorite
poems, I leaned toward poems which, in my view, creatively expressed
some aspect of pre-simulationist idea or image. Thanks so much for giving
me the opportunity to read your poems. Sincerely, Edward Nudelman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~
FIRST PLACE
“Conscious Thoughts as Resplendent Sense-Redundancy,”
or "Rambling Smaragdus Relates to Helen Keller"
by Smaragdus
I.
The human subconscious brain absorbs quickly
and more than the word-making
consciousness can directly define.
If we had to stop and consciously register every detail,
life would become a tedious cataloguing of objects.
Words are not a direct product of reality,
they are a direct filtered product of the human mind.
Words are a simulated reduction of experience.
Stop reading and
Go do something.
Shut up and
Get to work.
Annie Sullivan put Helen's hand under a well pump
and signed "water" into the same hand until Helen
understood that the touch was a symbol for the liquid.
Annie Sullivan programmed a code into Helen.
Blind and deaf,
Helen Keller mastered five languages and wrote a dozen books.
Without anybody to teach her human language,
Helen Keller would have been able to do little more than grunt
primitive codes for her basic needs.
For someone whose senses are deficient,
words can expand experience.
Our senses are only relative to what we sense.
Who, but the omniscient, has perfect senses?
My society is an old carnival dancing bear,
eyes poked out by rowdy children,
unable to hear because someone put cherry bombs in his ears
and yet still he twirls in his tutu
to the fleck of a light whip that's made a bare spot on his back
My reality sensors are made obtuse,
being in the belly of such an absurd beast.
I'll extrovert myself in words:
the only safety valve to my pressurized intellect,
scratching, like a prisoner,
marks of time into the grizzly stomach wall.
Can he feel my digging like morse code?
II.
If poetry is an act of communication,
why is it often so difficult to comprehend?
Is it egoism?
Elitism?
Anti-socialism?
Or is it the overwhelmed senses of my subconscious
leaking through to my consciousness,
trying to be understood
with the interpreting program translated to code?
Like an un-programmed Helen Keller
I grunt my needs into poetic abstraction.
I flail my offensive arms rhythmically in the dark silence
screaming at the top of my lungs
yet I cannot hear myself
nor understand the mortal piece I wield.
Is it just a sign of globalization?
Perhaps my hyper-sensitive reception
has absorbed the bombardment of a world of contradicting symbols,
leaving my overwhelmed instinct a riddled fractured salmagundi,
a wreckage of spitting pastiche.
The holes in my poetic body
are fascinating gunshot wounds
made by social scissors
to a folded piece of white construction:
the closed pattern cut-out of a poster snowflake.
Why, instead of trying to recreate realistically
an experience with clear Euclidean description,
I love what I do not know.
do I want to mix and abstract words in a poem,
making the experience so subjective
and tailored to myself
that the Observer's interpretation is sure to be muddled?
My pillow bears an imprint:
a Veronica's veil of
impassioned human secretions
sponged from idolatry.
Defaced, my featureless crown
bows to the indent of your drowsy frown
on the cushion that your head has never touched.
III.
In the movie Mask,
Rocky Dennis shows his blind friend Diana
what sight-derived adjectives are
by having her feel a hot potato for "red,"
cottonballs for "billowy,"
ice for "blue."
A hot potato is not red.
Ice is not blue.
Cottonballs, by themselves in your hand,
are not billowy.
So, can it be logical
that these sight-sensitive adjectives correspond to concrete nouns
that do not hold the visually concrete definition
of the sense adjectives?
My presumptuous melody
is a diamond-studded Hollywood cerise brassiere
twinkling on a clothes-line stripper in the breeze.
The tacky pink resonates out of my mouth
like a chewing gum bubble.
The pop-song is saccharine
and I am a crumping synesthete.
This is not sense-redundancy.
The way our minds overlap sensory input is the missing sequitur to Dennis'
logic
and to the logic of poetry and artistic abstraction.
Fire, the quintessence of "hot," is mostly red.
When we see snow or ice outside, it reflects the sky, giving it a blue tinge.
When we see billowing clouds, they resemble cottonballs.
It is very comprehendible.
Abstraction only gets incomprehensible when we get more subjective.
The more we tailor words to our unique experiences,
the less we are universally communicative.
Very few, if any, people will find our specific word-suit a perfect fit.
Then should we be a Onc-ler and create a poetic thneed?
I embroider my brand name
into the inflexible fabric
I've peeled from my psyche.
Empty skin
it hangs on a clearance rack
because no one can wear it.
IV.
Like the thneed
(which is not requisite,
but compulsory to patch the hole of want
marketing has shot into so many brains),
a lot of current popular products are a simulated psychological trick-
like non-functional racing accessories for cars.
They give the illusion of speed,
but really they just add weight to the car,
ultimately reducing the speed they promise our subconscious.
Duped!
Pulchritudinous in my kit Maserati,
I strut sitting down.
Winking at strangers
through shady windows.
Covetous observers do not realize
How much I compromise to impress:
I sacrificed my 6.0 L V12 for a stellar paint job.
Too hypnotized by my swank racing stripe
no one notices my certifiable caddie cart contrivance.
Should we, as pre-simulationists,
descry the hollow simulations
we see in the personal and societal mirror?
Is that enough?
How do we bridge between the real and the simulation
without becoming a hypocrite?
There's a chasm between us
I yodel across
And hear a din of echoes
I strain
But I cannot separate you
As an intellectual movement,
could Pre-sim be the Annie Sullivan to a de-centered society?
As a human being,
how do we take hold of just one person,
proverbially blind, deaf and illiterate
and share ourselves
so that they understand our vision,
our true unique subjective selves
that no one could possibly wholly see,
but perhaps glean?
Where is the water and the touch that will pierce your narrow world?
Where is my water and my touch?
I am a black hole
Note my entropy
Stick your fingers in my mouth
And feel my tongue
Please try to understand
My singularity
COMMENTS
This multi-layered poem held my attention from the opening salvo, “The
human subconscious brain absorbs quickly and more than the word-
making consciousness can directly define,” a conjecture bold in its
premise of an organic art that surpasses the limitations of its own medium.
This is a poem with its own built-in counterpoint (or conversation), pitting
two separate worlds against each other in poetic fisticuffs. And what we
gain is a sense of the enormous challenge art presents to the artist.
We find in the opening section the speaker (or ‘presimulationist
protagonist’, if you will), describing the limitations of language where
‘words are not a direct product of reality,’ but rather filtered from
experience through the mind’s eye. There is this juxtaposition of narrative
presented, where we learn about Helen Keller’s ascension to language
through a nearly hopeless disability, who ‘mastered five languages and
wrote a dozen books.’ We are shown how the senses (beyond sight and
sound) contributed to that learning: “For someone whose senses are
deficient, words can expand experience.”
The poem then reverts to first person and becomes metaphorical: society
is shown as a dancing bear, insensitive, devolved into toy (twirling in his
tutu). The ego has run rampant, and the poet is trying to extricate himself
from what might be construed as the Postmodern monster, the
constraining beast, confining the artist in it’s own stomach wall (here the
metaphors abound!).
In Section II, the speaker, thinking out loud, asks how poetry can be so
difficult to comprehend. The question emanates from the foregoing
discourse on the mutability of language. Is it because of the ego in the
artist? Elitism? The answer, we are told, lies intrinsically in the coded
messages, ‘leaking through to my subconsciousness.’ Similar to Helen
Keller’s grappling with language, so to our ardent and often abstract
expression fights to find a body beyond its spirit. Here the speaker calls
attention to our need to characterize experience above and beyond a linear
description: “Why, instead of trying to recreate realistically an experience
with clear Euclidean description, I love what I do not know.”
In Section III the speaker delineates a vivid scene from the movie, Mask,
and calls attention to the subtle interplay of syntax and grammar. This is
perhaps the high-point of the poem where we find brilliant language,
embellished but not overwrought, in a forceful inside view of poetry, its
logic and its apparent anti-sense: a hot potato becomes a code word for
‘red’; cotton balls for the adjective ‘billowy’; ice for ‘blue.’ But the speaker
argues for logic against abstraction and gives clues: billowing clouds
resemble cotton balls, fire is hot, etc. Do our words mask reality and merely
simulate, or can we expand our senses by understanding our words?
In Section IV, the speaker expands on the illusion prevalent in our modern
simulated world where ‘marketing has shot into so many brains.’ In our
haste to absorb it, we become ‘duped.’ And what should be the philosopher’
s role (or presimulationist)? Is it enough to simply ‘descry the hollow
simulations,’ or is there a mandate to bridge the gap? “There’s a chasm
between us, I yodel across and hear a din of echoes…” “Where is my water
and my touch?”
Nearing the end, the speaker pleads in a kind of poetic hortatory barrage.
The pace is swift as the poem slides into an elegant and compact six-line
closing epithet:
I am a black hole
Note my entropy
Stick your fingers in my mouth
And feel my tongue
Please try to understand
My singularity
The power and heat in this poem are demonstrated by its unbridled
passion. The poet is not simply stating a case for art or an explanation of
the limitations of language in poetry. Clearly, there is a vivid contrast
portrayed between the world of ego and the more concrete absolute.
However, in this poem we find the heart coming to the fore, compelled to
inform the mind. The poem provides a bird’s eye view of the philosopher
slash prophet bewildered with the need to convey and the concomitant
frustration in viewing the obstacles before him. The poet has deftly
positioned himself between the two poles and makes a poem out what
otherwise might have been a treatise. For me, that’s what sticks, the
wobbling back and forth from narrative to highly poetic imagery. The poem
deserves time to settle in the brain. To stew there awhile. This is a poem
you come back to as a resource.
SECOND PLACE
Simulation
by Barbary Chaapel
We turn in on each other
In those first months of sacred knowing.
I am sweet fruit. She swims naked in
The red-black juice of a pomegranate,
Qualia becoming unbridgeable
For the one of us.
I signal baby kisses
To my little aril other,
Her tiny foot and leg tilt in my round pan
Of a brain. I become the boat,
She, the norish voyageur,
Fetus in fetu.
COMMENTS
I love this taut, succinct, majestically colorful poem with its blunt and
appropriate title, its effortless fluidity and simple form. I’m a sucker for
unrhymed couplets, and this poem delivers with short bursts of energy.
There is great care here to craft every word and phrase to its maximum
potential. Thus, in the first line we read, “We turn in on each other,” with the
all-important preposition ‘in’ placed inconspicuously in the middle of the
phrase. But what a great setup for what’s to follow, and what a subtle way
to convey an inward kind of huddling that is organic. Integral.
An interesting aspect of this poem is that the speaker has not tipped any
cards (certainly not by the title) of where we are about to go. But we learn
there is a knowing, and that it is sacred and shared. There are two entities.
One is sweet fruit, the other swims in ‘the red-black juice of a
pomegranate’ (quite an image!). The metaphor takes shape in, “qualia
becoming unbridgeable for the one of us.” Is this a shielded world from
open eyes? An embryonic possibility? A joining? Or an irretrievable error in
the organic whole?
She signals a kiss to her ‘like’ seed. And then we are made to understand
the truth of the matter. Here is semblance of life, a mass of cells- but
familiar as ‘a tiny foot,’ or a leg tilted in my ‘round pan of a brain’ (again,
another fabulous image). This foreign friend, this fetal anomaly, has
become its own dark ‘norish voyager,’ and the unabashed host declares
that, even so, she shall be ‘my little other.’ Wow!
This is a poem of wonder and discovery. We’re made privy to sights and
images we have scarcely ever considered. But the poet has taken the
rarest of medical events, a shared mass of tissue (sometimes termed
‘parasitic twin’) and inverted the metaphor to provide for the most intimate
and considerate of emotional expressions. As well, we can extrapolate
from the title a parallel to our own simulated worlds where we construct
foreign entities and guises to further our own loss of identity. How much
better to tear down the illusion and accept with love and gratitude what
might otherwise have appeared foreign and ugly?
THIRD PLACE
Ayn Soph ~ Infinite Divinity ~ A Villanelle
by Jan Hersh
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
Transcends our mortal robes of bone and skin
My soul divine the witness from beyond
The world conductor wields a bright baton
Directs electric song of yang and yin
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
I'm made of light and know that I belong
All particles of life are kith and kin
My soul divine the witness from beyond
I greet the sacred gift of each new dawn
Delighting in our planet's heav'nly spin
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
In death identity is lost and gone
It need not lead to fear nor to chagrin
My soul divine the witness from beyond
Physical me breathes only for so long
Divinity forever burns within
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
My soul divine the witness from beyond
COMMENTS
I’m not normally one drawn to strict form in poetry, per se. But I’d have to
say, if there’s a poetry form as elaborate and technical as this, which, at the
same time is so subtle and well-suited to melody, I’d like to hear about it.
Although the villanelle was first devised in the late 1800’s, it was clearly
made popular by Dylan Thomas’ in his renowned poem, “Do not go gentle
into that good night,’ and some have said that all subsequent efforts have
fallen short of that gem. While that may be true, we find here a lovely
offering, if not an emblem of universality, and a brilliant poem hearkening to
the concept of the ‘infinite divinity, as found in the Kabbalah.
The poem leaps out with an unforgettable image, “The nakedness beneath
is what lives on,” and in true villanelle splendor, the poet places it perfectly
so as to reappear (as per villanelle rule) in three out of the next five stanzas
(in total: s1, s2, s4, s6… each in different positions). For some reason, this
adds to an illusory, melodic tone which can be at the same time as haunting
as comforting. The divine attribute here alluded to, this creative mind and/or
personality, is said to ‘transcend our mortal robes,’ and wields a bright
baton, directing electric song ‘of yang and yin’ (perhaps the only nit I would
point would be in the somewhat forced rhyme-pair, yin/kin). The tone and
image are reminiscent of Blake or John Donne, worthy comparators, no
doubt.
This superb poem has great movement with excellent flow, a difficult
feature to pull off with this form. We’re brought into the secrets of the poet’
s aspiring heart, how she sees and views her own existence, how she puts
herself in the mix of the cosmos. And all this with a facile
unpretentiousness. “The nakedness beneath is what lives on/My soul divine
the witness from beyond.” Try saying that a few times out loud. You won’t
soon forget it.
Please join me in congratulating Smaragdus (First Prize), Barbary (Second
Prize) and Jan (Third Prize) for their superb poems found below with a brief
commentary by Edward Nudelman. There were over 20 poems submitted,
all of which excelled and made this a very 'close' decision, with many
poems vying for placement. In the end, in the final winnowing of my favorite
poems, I leaned toward poems which, in my view, creatively expressed
some aspect of pre-simulationist idea or image. Thanks so much for giving
me the opportunity to read your poems. Sincerely, Edward Nudelman
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~
FIRST PLACE
“Conscious Thoughts as Resplendent Sense-Redundancy,”
or "Rambling Smaragdus Relates to Helen Keller"
by Smaragdus
I.
The human subconscious brain absorbs quickly
and more than the word-making
consciousness can directly define.
If we had to stop and consciously register every detail,
life would become a tedious cataloguing of objects.
Words are not a direct product of reality,
they are a direct filtered product of the human mind.
Words are a simulated reduction of experience.
Stop reading and
Go do something.
Shut up and
Get to work.
Annie Sullivan put Helen's hand under a well pump
and signed "water" into the same hand until Helen
understood that the touch was a symbol for the liquid.
Annie Sullivan programmed a code into Helen.
Blind and deaf,
Helen Keller mastered five languages and wrote a dozen books.
Without anybody to teach her human language,
Helen Keller would have been able to do little more than grunt
primitive codes for her basic needs.
For someone whose senses are deficient,
words can expand experience.
Our senses are only relative to what we sense.
Who, but the omniscient, has perfect senses?
My society is an old carnival dancing bear,
eyes poked out by rowdy children,
unable to hear because someone put cherry bombs in his ears
and yet still he twirls in his tutu
to the fleck of a light whip that's made a bare spot on his back
My reality sensors are made obtuse,
being in the belly of such an absurd beast.
I'll extrovert myself in words:
the only safety valve to my pressurized intellect,
scratching, like a prisoner,
marks of time into the grizzly stomach wall.
Can he feel my digging like morse code?
II.
If poetry is an act of communication,
why is it often so difficult to comprehend?
Is it egoism?
Elitism?
Anti-socialism?
Or is it the overwhelmed senses of my subconscious
leaking through to my consciousness,
trying to be understood
with the interpreting program translated to code?
Like an un-programmed Helen Keller
I grunt my needs into poetic abstraction.
I flail my offensive arms rhythmically in the dark silence
screaming at the top of my lungs
yet I cannot hear myself
nor understand the mortal piece I wield.
Is it just a sign of globalization?
Perhaps my hyper-sensitive reception
has absorbed the bombardment of a world of contradicting symbols,
leaving my overwhelmed instinct a riddled fractured salmagundi,
a wreckage of spitting pastiche.
The holes in my poetic body
are fascinating gunshot wounds
made by social scissors
to a folded piece of white construction:
the closed pattern cut-out of a poster snowflake.
Why, instead of trying to recreate realistically
an experience with clear Euclidean description,
I love what I do not know.
do I want to mix and abstract words in a poem,
making the experience so subjective
and tailored to myself
that the Observer's interpretation is sure to be muddled?
My pillow bears an imprint:
a Veronica's veil of
impassioned human secretions
sponged from idolatry.
Defaced, my featureless crown
bows to the indent of your drowsy frown
on the cushion that your head has never touched.
III.
In the movie Mask,
Rocky Dennis shows his blind friend Diana
what sight-derived adjectives are
by having her feel a hot potato for "red,"
cottonballs for "billowy,"
ice for "blue."
A hot potato is not red.
Ice is not blue.
Cottonballs, by themselves in your hand,
are not billowy.
So, can it be logical
that these sight-sensitive adjectives correspond to concrete nouns
that do not hold the visually concrete definition
of the sense adjectives?
My presumptuous melody
is a diamond-studded Hollywood cerise brassiere
twinkling on a clothes-line stripper in the breeze.
The tacky pink resonates out of my mouth
like a chewing gum bubble.
The pop-song is saccharine
and I am a crumping synesthete.
This is not sense-redundancy.
The way our minds overlap sensory input is the missing sequitur to Dennis'
logic
and to the logic of poetry and artistic abstraction.
Fire, the quintessence of "hot," is mostly red.
When we see snow or ice outside, it reflects the sky, giving it a blue tinge.
When we see billowing clouds, they resemble cottonballs.
It is very comprehendible.
Abstraction only gets incomprehensible when we get more subjective.
The more we tailor words to our unique experiences,
the less we are universally communicative.
Very few, if any, people will find our specific word-suit a perfect fit.
Then should we be a Onc-ler and create a poetic thneed?
I embroider my brand name
into the inflexible fabric
I've peeled from my psyche.
Empty skin
it hangs on a clearance rack
because no one can wear it.
IV.
Like the thneed
(which is not requisite,
but compulsory to patch the hole of want
marketing has shot into so many brains),
a lot of current popular products are a simulated psychological trick-
like non-functional racing accessories for cars.
They give the illusion of speed,
but really they just add weight to the car,
ultimately reducing the speed they promise our subconscious.
Duped!
Pulchritudinous in my kit Maserati,
I strut sitting down.
Winking at strangers
through shady windows.
Covetous observers do not realize
How much I compromise to impress:
I sacrificed my 6.0 L V12 for a stellar paint job.
Too hypnotized by my swank racing stripe
no one notices my certifiable caddie cart contrivance.
Should we, as pre-simulationists,
descry the hollow simulations
we see in the personal and societal mirror?
Is that enough?
How do we bridge between the real and the simulation
without becoming a hypocrite?
There's a chasm between us
I yodel across
And hear a din of echoes
I strain
But I cannot separate you
As an intellectual movement,
could Pre-sim be the Annie Sullivan to a de-centered society?
As a human being,
how do we take hold of just one person,
proverbially blind, deaf and illiterate
and share ourselves
so that they understand our vision,
our true unique subjective selves
that no one could possibly wholly see,
but perhaps glean?
Where is the water and the touch that will pierce your narrow world?
Where is my water and my touch?
I am a black hole
Note my entropy
Stick your fingers in my mouth
And feel my tongue
Please try to understand
My singularity
COMMENTS
This multi-layered poem held my attention from the opening salvo, “The
human subconscious brain absorbs quickly and more than the word-
making consciousness can directly define,” a conjecture bold in its
premise of an organic art that surpasses the limitations of its own medium.
This is a poem with its own built-in counterpoint (or conversation), pitting
two separate worlds against each other in poetic fisticuffs. And what we
gain is a sense of the enormous challenge art presents to the artist.
We find in the opening section the speaker (or ‘presimulationist
protagonist’, if you will), describing the limitations of language where
‘words are not a direct product of reality,’ but rather filtered from
experience through the mind’s eye. There is this juxtaposition of narrative
presented, where we learn about Helen Keller’s ascension to language
through a nearly hopeless disability, who ‘mastered five languages and
wrote a dozen books.’ We are shown how the senses (beyond sight and
sound) contributed to that learning: “For someone whose senses are
deficient, words can expand experience.”
The poem then reverts to first person and becomes metaphorical: society
is shown as a dancing bear, insensitive, devolved into toy (twirling in his
tutu). The ego has run rampant, and the poet is trying to extricate himself
from what might be construed as the Postmodern monster, the
constraining beast, confining the artist in it’s own stomach wall (here the
metaphors abound!).
In Section II, the speaker, thinking out loud, asks how poetry can be so
difficult to comprehend. The question emanates from the foregoing
discourse on the mutability of language. Is it because of the ego in the
artist? Elitism? The answer, we are told, lies intrinsically in the coded
messages, ‘leaking through to my subconsciousness.’ Similar to Helen
Keller’s grappling with language, so to our ardent and often abstract
expression fights to find a body beyond its spirit. Here the speaker calls
attention to our need to characterize experience above and beyond a linear
description: “Why, instead of trying to recreate realistically an experience
with clear Euclidean description, I love what I do not know.”
In Section III the speaker delineates a vivid scene from the movie, Mask,
and calls attention to the subtle interplay of syntax and grammar. This is
perhaps the high-point of the poem where we find brilliant language,
embellished but not overwrought, in a forceful inside view of poetry, its
logic and its apparent anti-sense: a hot potato becomes a code word for
‘red’; cotton balls for the adjective ‘billowy’; ice for ‘blue.’ But the speaker
argues for logic against abstraction and gives clues: billowing clouds
resemble cotton balls, fire is hot, etc. Do our words mask reality and merely
simulate, or can we expand our senses by understanding our words?
In Section IV, the speaker expands on the illusion prevalent in our modern
simulated world where ‘marketing has shot into so many brains.’ In our
haste to absorb it, we become ‘duped.’ And what should be the philosopher’
s role (or presimulationist)? Is it enough to simply ‘descry the hollow
simulations,’ or is there a mandate to bridge the gap? “There’s a chasm
between us, I yodel across and hear a din of echoes…” “Where is my water
and my touch?”
Nearing the end, the speaker pleads in a kind of poetic hortatory barrage.
The pace is swift as the poem slides into an elegant and compact six-line
closing epithet:
I am a black hole
Note my entropy
Stick your fingers in my mouth
And feel my tongue
Please try to understand
My singularity
The power and heat in this poem are demonstrated by its unbridled
passion. The poet is not simply stating a case for art or an explanation of
the limitations of language in poetry. Clearly, there is a vivid contrast
portrayed between the world of ego and the more concrete absolute.
However, in this poem we find the heart coming to the fore, compelled to
inform the mind. The poem provides a bird’s eye view of the philosopher
slash prophet bewildered with the need to convey and the concomitant
frustration in viewing the obstacles before him. The poet has deftly
positioned himself between the two poles and makes a poem out what
otherwise might have been a treatise. For me, that’s what sticks, the
wobbling back and forth from narrative to highly poetic imagery. The poem
deserves time to settle in the brain. To stew there awhile. This is a poem
you come back to as a resource.
SECOND PLACE
Simulation
by Barbary Chaapel
We turn in on each other
In those first months of sacred knowing.
I am sweet fruit. She swims naked in
The red-black juice of a pomegranate,
Qualia becoming unbridgeable
For the one of us.
I signal baby kisses
To my little aril other,
Her tiny foot and leg tilt in my round pan
Of a brain. I become the boat,
She, the norish voyageur,
Fetus in fetu.
COMMENTS
I love this taut, succinct, majestically colorful poem with its blunt and
appropriate title, its effortless fluidity and simple form. I’m a sucker for
unrhymed couplets, and this poem delivers with short bursts of energy.
There is great care here to craft every word and phrase to its maximum
potential. Thus, in the first line we read, “We turn in on each other,” with the
all-important preposition ‘in’ placed inconspicuously in the middle of the
phrase. But what a great setup for what’s to follow, and what a subtle way
to convey an inward kind of huddling that is organic. Integral.
An interesting aspect of this poem is that the speaker has not tipped any
cards (certainly not by the title) of where we are about to go. But we learn
there is a knowing, and that it is sacred and shared. There are two entities.
One is sweet fruit, the other swims in ‘the red-black juice of a
pomegranate’ (quite an image!). The metaphor takes shape in, “qualia
becoming unbridgeable for the one of us.” Is this a shielded world from
open eyes? An embryonic possibility? A joining? Or an irretrievable error in
the organic whole?
She signals a kiss to her ‘like’ seed. And then we are made to understand
the truth of the matter. Here is semblance of life, a mass of cells- but
familiar as ‘a tiny foot,’ or a leg tilted in my ‘round pan of a brain’ (again,
another fabulous image). This foreign friend, this fetal anomaly, has
become its own dark ‘norish voyager,’ and the unabashed host declares
that, even so, she shall be ‘my little other.’ Wow!
This is a poem of wonder and discovery. We’re made privy to sights and
images we have scarcely ever considered. But the poet has taken the
rarest of medical events, a shared mass of tissue (sometimes termed
‘parasitic twin’) and inverted the metaphor to provide for the most intimate
and considerate of emotional expressions. As well, we can extrapolate
from the title a parallel to our own simulated worlds where we construct
foreign entities and guises to further our own loss of identity. How much
better to tear down the illusion and accept with love and gratitude what
might otherwise have appeared foreign and ugly?
THIRD PLACE
Ayn Soph ~ Infinite Divinity ~ A Villanelle
by Jan Hersh
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
Transcends our mortal robes of bone and skin
My soul divine the witness from beyond
The world conductor wields a bright baton
Directs electric song of yang and yin
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
I'm made of light and know that I belong
All particles of life are kith and kin
My soul divine the witness from beyond
I greet the sacred gift of each new dawn
Delighting in our planet's heav'nly spin
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
In death identity is lost and gone
It need not lead to fear nor to chagrin
My soul divine the witness from beyond
Physical me breathes only for so long
Divinity forever burns within
The nakedness beneath is what lives on
My soul divine the witness from beyond
COMMENTS
I’m not normally one drawn to strict form in poetry, per se. But I’d have to
say, if there’s a poetry form as elaborate and technical as this, which, at the
same time is so subtle and well-suited to melody, I’d like to hear about it.
Although the villanelle was first devised in the late 1800’s, it was clearly
made popular by Dylan Thomas’ in his renowned poem, “Do not go gentle
into that good night,’ and some have said that all subsequent efforts have
fallen short of that gem. While that may be true, we find here a lovely
offering, if not an emblem of universality, and a brilliant poem hearkening to
the concept of the ‘infinite divinity, as found in the Kabbalah.
The poem leaps out with an unforgettable image, “The nakedness beneath
is what lives on,” and in true villanelle splendor, the poet places it perfectly
so as to reappear (as per villanelle rule) in three out of the next five stanzas
(in total: s1, s2, s4, s6… each in different positions). For some reason, this
adds to an illusory, melodic tone which can be at the same time as haunting
as comforting. The divine attribute here alluded to, this creative mind and/or
personality, is said to ‘transcend our mortal robes,’ and wields a bright
baton, directing electric song ‘of yang and yin’ (perhaps the only nit I would
point would be in the somewhat forced rhyme-pair, yin/kin). The tone and
image are reminiscent of Blake or John Donne, worthy comparators, no
doubt.
This superb poem has great movement with excellent flow, a difficult
feature to pull off with this form. We’re brought into the secrets of the poet’
s aspiring heart, how she sees and views her own existence, how she puts
herself in the mix of the cosmos. And all this with a facile
unpretentiousness. “The nakedness beneath is what lives on/My soul divine
the witness from beyond.” Try saying that a few times out loud. You won’t
soon forget it.
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