John Casquarelli
Feeding on Sugar Water
The distance between the past and the present is the illusory pothole on the long highway connecting silence to form. The pothole’s trap is that we often choose to (re)member and find uniformity with our perceived earlier traumas at the expense of the potential equilibrium in the current moment. This may hurt any future opportunity to move forward, to jump. Even so, if we recognize, or (re)cognize, the space that the pothole allows for observation and imagination, without succumbing to the temptation of stagnation, it is possible to add meaning to experience and language.
Murat Nemet-Nejat’s long poem, Animals of Dawn, introduces the reader to a “humming bird” as it “approaches the moment of stasis.” The use of blank space on the page after line breaks provides the opportunity to add dimensional meaning to the words that precede the space. After the first stanza in “Hummingbird,” the “you away” is isolated. The space that follows that two-word line layers the language. Who is the “you”? How is memory influenced when offered that short space to observe? Are the “instantaneous darts” some cognitive contusion lingering from the deep wound of parting or the bird motivated to move forward, feeding on sugar water? Are we supposed to move forward? Such moments on the page reveal Murat’s mastery that more may be lurking between ink and blank space. The moments of reflection are not meant to confine the reader in memory, but provide brief static glimpses so that a jump is possible to new lines and meaning.
In D.H. Lawrence’s “Humming-bird,” he ends the poem with a couplet that brings the reader back to the present:
We look at him through the wrong end of the telescope of Time,
Luckily for us.
The ominous voice of the poem gives a warning that we should see the bird as more than the past. For our senses and feelings to optimize the magnitude of the moment, we must look beyond the monochrome existence of yesterday. Murat’s “humming bird” is given its moment as it approaches its stasis, balance, symmetry, not trapped in the pothole on the highway, but offered that ample brief speck in space time to reflect while standing on the feeder before that “instant on the threshold of not remembering.” That place and approach that allows the reader and imagination to jump.
The distance between the past and the present is the illusory pothole on the long highway connecting silence to form. The pothole’s trap is that we often choose to (re)member and find uniformity with our perceived earlier traumas at the expense of the potential equilibrium in the current moment. This may hurt any future opportunity to move forward, to jump. Even so, if we recognize, or (re)cognize, the space that the pothole allows for observation and imagination, without succumbing to the temptation of stagnation, it is possible to add meaning to experience and language.
Murat Nemet-Nejat’s long poem, Animals of Dawn, introduces the reader to a “humming bird” as it “approaches the moment of stasis.” The use of blank space on the page after line breaks provides the opportunity to add dimensional meaning to the words that precede the space. After the first stanza in “Hummingbird,” the “you away” is isolated. The space that follows that two-word line layers the language. Who is the “you”? How is memory influenced when offered that short space to observe? Are the “instantaneous darts” some cognitive contusion lingering from the deep wound of parting or the bird motivated to move forward, feeding on sugar water? Are we supposed to move forward? Such moments on the page reveal Murat’s mastery that more may be lurking between ink and blank space. The moments of reflection are not meant to confine the reader in memory, but provide brief static glimpses so that a jump is possible to new lines and meaning.
In D.H. Lawrence’s “Humming-bird,” he ends the poem with a couplet that brings the reader back to the present:
We look at him through the wrong end of the telescope of Time,
Luckily for us.
The ominous voice of the poem gives a warning that we should see the bird as more than the past. For our senses and feelings to optimize the magnitude of the moment, we must look beyond the monochrome existence of yesterday. Murat’s “humming bird” is given its moment as it approaches its stasis, balance, symmetry, not trapped in the pothole on the highway, but offered that ample brief speck in space time to reflect while standing on the feeder before that “instant on the threshold of not remembering.” That place and approach that allows the reader and imagination to jump.