We are pleased to publish new work by Felino Soriano and Jessica McFadden. Felino is a returning champion and Jessica is a unique find.
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Reading the poems above, watching the phenomenal movie, Tree of Life, and moving further along the path of Zen, I thought about images versus language. I thought about the way that words can never capture what we see, feel, smell, touch or hear. They can never be more than an approximation, a translation, yet we think in language alone — not in images, not in other dimensions. We think in words. And as long as we think in words alone, we can never truly cross over. We can never truly release ourselves into the void to become one with it, to force a union between form and emptiness, emptiness and form.
Not that we must do this. Art is open. Art does not do necessity. Art does not narrow. But other paths exist, and those paths follow a different course. Other paths seek something beyond words, where words fall short and we know they fall short, because we sense that our minds can think without them, and if that happens, we find another ground of being.
Not for the faint of heart, it’s a leap into the unknown that, paradoxically, a poet, an artist, must take from time to time. Translating words into no-words, into pure spirit, pure music, immediate, unfiltered, now.