cygnus – silentbroadcast

It happened! My fourth book, No Comet, That Serpent in the Sky Means Noise, is now available to order from Kore Press. I can’t believe I get to join their family! I love this cover, designed by my dear friend and incredible poet, James Meetze. After reading his book, Phantom Hour, I knew we spoke the same language of loss. He also wrote a statement for the back of the text. I felt enfolded by such love and insight with Lisa and Ann at Kore, and with James. Cynthia Arrieu-King and Ruth Ellen Kocher also wrote statements for the book. Their spirits are simpatico with mine on so many levels. Cindy truly has become family to me over the years. Right now, I feel so gently held.

The cover art (and a few images internal to the text) were generously made available by Finnish photographer J-P Metsavainio. I am a huge fan of his incredible astral photographs, and found them to display an incredible subtlety and brilliance. I can’t wait for him to get a copy!

Some of them were the very first poems I wrote when I decided that I was a poet, back in my early 20s, astonishingly. One thing I will say about these poems is that they came from a space of grief. And yet, when I look these poems over, I feel solace. I think you will, too. I’ve been preoccupied with devastation the last many years. Solar Maximum explored a monster light–the last light of the sun before it destroyed the earth, and leaned into something strange. I feel like this new book of poems hold devastation a bit differently. They’re very human, these poems. Solar Maximum tended towards what we are moving into as we became other than human; with this new book, we’re still ourselves, miraculously.

I was looking at this picture of the Cygnus cluster earlier this week. Nasa Spitzer Space Telescope image of Cygnus Whenever I look at satellite images of deep space that have been re-rendered to highlight their anatomy, I’m struck by how much data is carried in light. This image has been processed in order to make infrared information visible to us. From light, we can determine the composition of these celestial bodies, their rotation and movement, their age…we can even predict their futures.

When I think of radiation as light, when I think of heat as light, when I think of vibration as light, I am moved by the notion that all things in the universe transmit. Communicate. Cast informational streams from themselves. What does the heat generated from my body say? What am I broadcasting at every quivering instant?

And the light that reaches me and interacts with my body, my perceptions, my ideas… what information is being so blindly delivered into me?

Our bodies require light.

I seek the opening of an understanding.

What is being said and said again with me. What am I now saying, too. If my skin were composed of eyes, what would it see. If my body were a gigantic listening drum, what would I perceive.

A still from Hardcash production's documentary, "Children of the Secret State." — A still from Hardcash production’s documentary, “Children of the Secret State.”

When I was working on what later turned into my second book, Underground National, I was watching several documentaries about North Korea. I watched these documentaries with a grain of salt, of course, but the images were arresting. I was particularly moved by the plight of orphaned children in North Korea, many of whom are starving and live by begging or picking out scraps. There was one orphan, a boy, who was in clear distress. His face was contorted with pain. No one stopped to even look at him. He walked about, holding his clasped hands up to his chest. I am not sure how old he was. Perhaps 8 or 9. He was very small. The documentary was made over ten years ago. My spirit tells me this young boy did not survive. And when I think of this, I realize that the only documents that attest to his life could very well be the footage that was used in the film. And I was observing the recreated light patterns of what had once echoed off his body and into the camera’s lens, captured.

Light moves and fills me. It is not quite life, but it echoes and drums and resounds and speaks it.

Tag: cygnus

My new book is now available!

Light is a container full of noise