It’s been a long winter. Like winter would never leave. Ever leave. Even though it was fairly mild where I live, the mood was winter for a long time. The mind of winter. The soul of cold. Perhaps it’s the state of the world. The economy. The cultural and political fights. Endless and ultimately boring. Perhaps. That said, spring is here and just in nick of time. By the way, who is this Nick character and what did he do…
modern moments (main-à-dieu, nova scotia) sun & cloud (reproduction) bright band, slow mov- ing, copy- ing the sea nest (goodyear) rock- weed, dulse & sorrel, moss a- round the tire night journey (disconnect) shoot- ing star, far cry, jet st- reams in the bay
What has it? What brings it? What gives meaning to our existence in the here and now? The afterlife? Paradoxes aside, the search for meaning has meaning itself, above and beyond any cleverness in the equation. To express that meaning, however, has become problematic in our late date — our cynical, jaded, post-post-guileless world. Post-guileless in the sense that we no longer can stop self-referencing or self-consciousness enough to just be. Enough to let be be the finale of seem,…
The (Post-)Modern Search for Meaning: Tolstoy’s Escape from the Trap A Reflection by Sean Howard For the last few years, a close friend has been complaining, with light touch but increasingly heavy heart, of a deep-seated creative malaise, an impasse in his search for an authentic voice and message. Among other sources, his depression can be traced to his intense and academically accomplished engagement with Wittgenstein, whose humbling exposé of the ‘language game’ – and, therewith, what…
(taken from cape breton university) i. the technique of oil painting colors mixing in the square. straw- board fields. the buckram coat. saucepan; stirring sand to sun. corner- ed: students pain- ting… *** the canvas leaves. distant verid- ian. the ochre stage. the touched sky. (picasso: blue tumblers.) the wind, flak- ing… ii. testing: its place in education today marks- ism. learning to score. strange fruit; pre- pared minds. (the Ameri- cannery…) waste pro- ducts; fresh out of school?
We have new poems from Doreen LeBlanc and an essay from Sean Howard on tap. Both authors hail from Cape Breton, though Doreen splits time between Nova Scotia and Massachusetts now. This is her first publication, and we look forward to more poetry from her in the future. Sean’s work brings together a host of subject fields — psychology, philosophy, linguistics, science, poetry and poetics — to startle us into reading new bridges, new metaphors between them. …
Poetic Implications: Synchronicity and The Language of Meaning A Personal Reflection by Sean Howard Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Cape Breton University November 2008 A few months ago, I began work on a project I’ve been putting off for over a year: an account of my time in the clutches of what Jungian analysts call the ‘puer aeternus’ complex, or neurosis; an inflated sense of the self as a precious, creative but foredoomed ‘eternal youth,’ destroyed, to quote Jung’s…
shadowgraph 1: imagining the earth (poetry detected in hendrik lorentz’s nobel physics lecture, 1902) the present day? ‘in the mind’s case…’ the programmed air. the outshone sun. end- less study: the room’s must… the corresponding silence. science investigating its own circumstances? the magnetic can. (men raising triplets.) light grain, beam splitting. search narrowing: ether in mind. language succeeding who? math: talk cut short. (rapid typing…) liquid bodies. the X-rayed page? scientific method: nature bound to say. (‘the enlightenmentTM axiomatic…’) small…