Joyce Chong's work arrived in our inbox like a universe expanding. It was no coincidence that the piece of work I chose for publication was entitled "cosmic anatomy." Chong's work is at the same time distinctly finite and omnipotently encompassing. Her work doesn't speak about the universe, the world, the human condition with abstract frivolity, there is discernible depth and profound understanding, and it's for that reason that I asked Chong to write a feature for this month, to explore the area between art and science. I have faith you will soon know what I mean.
My first lessons in poetry came from a fascination with music and lyrics. The way words sounded, the texture they had on your tongue, the way giving them sound brought them to life in unanticipated ways. How the aural manipulates the written meaning. Or the empty deception of lilac: “lie-lack”. How words are not single celled organisms but carry connotations with them, these threads leading through to one another, and how subverting these expectations works on the mind. How do you translate song into image? What typography? What coarse, hand drawn lyrics on the page?
Then, how do you express the abstract? How do you condense the sensations of otherness and emotion into something discernible? Some clarity, something digestible. I think we all try to come to terms with things that are not concrete in our own ways. Words hold a strict meaning that, in the face of the difficult, sometimes just aren’t enough in saying what we want to say. So I think writing is a search, a perpetual quest for the right words in the right order that can express the exact specifications of a moment in human existence.
I use a lot of recurring themes of anatomy and science in my writing, especially poetry. Sometimes it feels like the only way to talk about the abstract is to cut into it directly with something precise, something known. The only way to parse sadness and melancholy and anger and indifference and the unintelligible garble of reality is by starting with what you do know. I think the fastest way to convey emotion is through the visceral, the gut heavy, the ache in your bones, the tug of the ligaments holding your skeleton intact, the minutiae of biology.
Some of this exists in “cosmic anatomy”, in some of the details. The poem is an exploration of distance, of the liminal space we occupy that keeps us buffered from one another and the ways we try to dismantle that space. It’s also a poem with a narrative, although vague and incomplete. It’s a letter, a monologue, a thought, a departure.
My relationship with my poetry is temporal. The more time that passes after its creation, the more crisp its flaws appear to me, the more its original lustre has dulled. I hope this means growth, a refusal to become stagnant or simplistic. Stuck in the same well worn grooves in the road. I would like to learn to write poems that are steady hands, poems that are lyrical and rhythmic, but are so quietly strong they leave bruises on your stomach when you’re done. Poems that you feel compelled to read aloud. Poems like the ones that leave me stunned, that weave words into something certain of itself, something sturdy, tied to Earth and ground. I want to write poems that don’t unravel over time, or fray at the edges. Poems that know themselves better than I could hope to know them.
