Language is live fossil; proof of the presence of absence.
Words systemized; sent out to retrofit existence; grunts became cities.
The instrumentalization of words (and aftermath) function to soothe us, even destructively (anti-song), from pain of repressed absence always active in biomemory of preverbal self.
Poets dwell on (and are viscerally sensitive to) linguistic evidential material of absence. Each generation of poets re-voice that material to express (song) suffering caused from desiring (pointlessly) bliss of self-deletion (or its outward manifestation, utopia.)
Datascape society: due to poet’s savage overexposure to instrumental and non-instrumental language, a poem’s inner decency is revoked, yet rather than die or go underground, it has freakishly multiplied (accelerated by anti-song) and panicked itself into farce. Words now stop the contemporary poem from executing its most basic task: re-vision.
Poet’s voice now illegible.
We’ve entered a post-desiring age, where lack of absent presence reconfigures nature of desire (makes pointless pointless) in both individual and culture, resulting in an unsingable society.
Grunt has returned with nothing to become.
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JOHN EBERSOLE is co-editor of Tourniquet Review. He lives in Houston, Texas.