2. Afterword to Inside Passage
The physical world, the world of
animals and oceans and flowers and any person that is not myself,
is other. As a poet, I do not want to humanize, or embody, or
describe the other, but to relate to it. My poetry is a poetry
of connections, of congruencies. To present, in an imagistic manner,
or describe in the romantic way, or to embody as a humanist, does
not involve love. The scientific vision necessitates the dissociation
of the observer from the object. That is also the vision of abstract
art, and it separates the artifact from the artificer. My poem
is not me, neither is it separate from me. My poem and I are related
to each other. I do not want to humanize the world, nor do I want
to dissect it. I want to discover my relationship to it. This
might be called a family vision. In that, it is a survival of
all, or nothing. Myth enters here on the same level, myth is simply
one way to explore relationships. Any kind of abstraction, or
romanticization creates fictions of disbelief. I am on the side
of all Noahs, all explorers who discover new connections. I and
my poem and the tree are related to each other. The tree expresses
leaves, the amphibian expresses fins, the bird its feathers, a
stone its mass. In evolution, the greater the complexity of the
organism, the more diversified is its range of expression and
inter-relations. Poetry does not reflect life, it is a part of
living; it is a natural a function as breathing or blossoming.
| |
Carolyn Zonailo
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
1977 |
Copyright by Carolyn Zonailo: www.carolynzonailo.com,
2004 |
The
Wave Goddess
