11. Poetry & Explanatory Essay by Jerome Berglund
Editor’s Note: The following essay by Jerome has been lightly edited to remove the portions that were directed to me in the larger communication within which this essay was contained.
As well, some of the poems incorporated various forms of haiga and typographical arrangements and effects to create shahai and concrete poetry. While beautiful work, they do not fit the particular brand of minimalist aesthetic that I am going for here and so I have unwrapped the poetry from its packaging.
I have thoroughly enjoyed and appreciate the insight and context powering Jerome’s thinking here. It provides rich nuance through which we can better access the full meaning and energy behind the words. Interesting that he mentions the Cillian Murphy nukes movie, as I refuse to watch it for what is ultimately its glorification of the war machine. I have come to view Hollywood as being a toxic miasma that settled over the country long ago.
The collaborative gembun refer to Jerome’s work with Shane Coppage on the next page.
Essay
Thrilled to find upcoming edition including the very solar-punk optimistic side of science fiction and speculative poetry, couldn’t agree . . . more about the importance of eschewing and rejecting the doomerist tendencies toward nihilism that objectively in many senses (David Foster Wallace was memorably adamant about this too!) is responsible for this sorry state of affairs our generation finds itself currently navigating.
I did my best to try to locate some cautiously optimistic verses in haiku and related forms, qualified hopefulness exuding works with elements of that karumi so integral to these traditions, acknowledging our imperfect state of affairs while envisioning a better future if we can pull up from this interminable nose-diving. They’re still a bit on the bleak side . . . for this fantastically themed and very necessary showcase I’m so looking forward to reading. . . .
For clarity here are some brief explanations of intentions and philosophies informing and driving individual works or why they were submitted for this specific call for material:
Chatter (scifaiku): The path forward toward consolidation and solidarity will invariably involve rejecting prevailing misinformation and consumption driven, ego-oriented approaches to self and the greater culture, such relinquishing of harmful weight can be a very liberating experience and process, interfacing significantly with Zen Buddhist underpinnings and tenets.
Tunnel (scifaibun): Reconciling ourselves to the diametrically opposed, incompatible and deeply detrimental, problematic bent (I’m reminded of the ‘appeal to tradition’ fallacy) of preceding philosophies, world views, economic and cultural practices will ultimately be a crucially positive thing for future generations, uncomfortable as such parting of ways can be in practice.
Filter Paper (scifaiku): A litmus test for whether depictions are reliable and trustworthy in the media and popular culture can often be inferred in subtle elements such as whether Russel Crowe or Leonardo DiCaprio or Cillian Murphy has been tasked with playing the monstrous advisor/czar/war architect. In more evolved visions of social engineering such as those espoused by B.F. Skinner movements (& contemporary concepts like Occupy) systems assume a more anonymous, leaderless arrangement and structure. As Fred Hampton reminds us, “You can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill revolution, you can jail a liberator but you can’t jail liberation.”
Iceberg (scifaiku): A sustainable future will require reevaluating empirically many preexisting assumptions and approaches, and countless Western ideas and practices (e.g., greenwashing perversions and co-opting of ostensibly noble intentions) invariably prove penny cheap and pound foolish when weighed in their larger context.
Tardigrade (scifaiku): The water bear is an impressively admirable icon to emulate, in our economically and socially trying landscape it represents an ideal to aspire towards.
Cranberry Field (collaborative gembun): Understanding and discerning the differing tones of sounds approaching and receding, perception and thinking in the long-term senses of delaying gratification and grasping our role in the bigger picture is integral. I’m reminded of the Greek proverb regarding, “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
Plastic Flowers (collaborative gembun): “In biology, a nymph (from Ancient Greek νύμφα nūmphē meaning ‘bride’) is the juvenile form of some invertebrates, particularly insects, which undergoes gradual metamorphosis (hemimetabolism) before reaching its adult stage.”
Event Horizon (collaborative gembun): “In astrophysics, an event horizon is a boundary beyond which events cannot affect an observer.”
Spider Rain (collaborative gembun): Arachnids are an admirable species which figuratively serve the greater ecosystem by isolating, capturing and halting the advance of harmful blood-sucking parasites. Their webs and proliferation might be likened to dissemination of constructive practices of self-critique and regulation sorely lacking in our modern wildly western chaos of modern feudalism. The vision of spiders carried by the wind (like the legendary song by Nena about averting Cold War global disaster) righteously spreading across the planet recalls Trotsky’s paragon of constructive permanent thoughtful revolution.
The Tunnel We Deserve
In the years to follow the young man likes to imagine there are alternate timelines out there where events diverged, split every which way like the petals of a lotus opening. Mayhap there exist some wheres his father did not look him over with a disgusted glance and shut the door but discovered him later, or the noose had not snapped and left him alive but forever changed, having tasted a bitter fruit of irrevocable knowledge he had not possessed with absolute certainty until that very instant. What if in some of these worlds his dad did not appear in that haunting frame, the boy landed on his keister and dusted himself off chagrinned, climbed drunkenly into bed and slept it off, kept the entire humiliating incident to himself. In those others when the rope proved stronger, its knot better placed or tied, and his father discovered grim success rather than pathetically foiled bid, does he mourn his son deeply without complication of graying culpability, needing not to contend with his own direct collusion, responsibility via condoning and tacitly approving that rash decision? There may even have been universes where the debacle healed their relationship, bonded and reinforced things unexpectedly, improved upon years of blackening distance and snowballs of mutual loathing, conversely brought this pair closer together instead of driving a fatal wedge, inserting broadest gaping chasm—that from either end seemed entirely unfeasible in ever aspiring to surmount or bridge—guaranteeing credible mistrust and the profoundest justified reservations in perpetuity… The son had significant trouble imagining any scenario in his own cards’ dealing which might projectedly alleviate or remedy those festering wounds which remained, some path forward that could realistically lead them toward a healthy relationship built on trust or mutual respect again. There had been so many infinite possibilities, but he just had to have turned right at Albuquerque.
gray yellow gray
sun playing peekaboo
infants distraught
Iceberg
garbage patch tyranny of the urgent
kamikaze mutant till the wheels fall off
jellyfish in the sky ecotourism
tardigrade & other poems
tardigrade
in the Antarctic
is that all you’ve got?
CHATTER
In Our Blood
GET AWAY
filter paper
who they cast
to play the king
Jerome Berglund
Jerome Berglund has published many haiku, haiga and haibun, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond and Presence. His collections Bathtub Poems, Funny Pages and Eleusinian Solutions were released by Setu, Meat For Tea press and Mōtus Audāx. A mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is available now from Yavanika.