The Linguistics of Light: (Salt Modern Poets)

The Linguistics of Light journeys from the north Norfolk coast of England across a vast emotional landscape to Greece and beyond. America is one of the imaginative and physical locations for some of the poems whilst others, for example, “Post-card of a Swan” begin with the small scale, but range in the ancient world and travel through theories of the universe to return to a confined, but comforting place: Einstein’s kitchen on a rainy day. These poems draw on science, on philosophy and on the bible for insight into our understanding of love, time and memory. Uncalled for, memory seems to: “come, flit land precise//on random things so that moments of the past return again and again and become, in Garra Rock, a kind of blueprint of the future.” In contrast, some of the sharp blue sunlight of Greece opens other questions of religion and science and, instead of observing a belief in God, the poem’s narrator becomes “observant of the ordinary”; the ordinary life of peasants and goats, but this observation offers a different idea of sacrament, one that leads to an unexpected fusion of science and spirituality in the poem’s final image. Ordinariness: of traffic, in “Miles from Litlington”; of ironing, in “Winter Afternoon in Hampden Park”, bring us full circle back to the south coast of England and, by so doing, complete the longing expressed in “Derek Jarman’s Garden”. The “shuttered – down, bleached emptiness” of Jarman’s home near Dungeness which opens the whole volume, sets one of its major themes: the longing, both literal and metaphorical, for light. Light is a predominant theme which resonates in many of the poems, including in the sequence which retell the paintings of the contemporary American painter Edward Hopper. Light, in these poems, can be enticing, compelling, mysterious, or spiritual or as in “Summertime”, even an assault. Throughout, poems also examine the often intimate, sometimes bewildering, relationship between language and the world, from the simplicity of “The Word” to the disturbing presence of madness, evoked with an equal simplicity, in “Why Words Might Not”, to “The Words to Say it”. This poem, in several parts, presses on the language we use for death, and our understanding of art and imagination. It is the pressure which informs the volume’s title: The Linguistics of Light.

Table of Contents:
Derek Jarman’s Garden, Dungeness First Naming Eden Postcard to my Brother The Quietest Hour Arkansas Spring Mother The Sabbath Sunday School The Word Annunciation Salome Holding the Head of Saint John the Baptist Dead Fox Arkansas in March Something that Happened Oxford, Again Hopper’s Canvas summertime couples Rooms – Sea Arriving in New York City House at Dusk Swans Maltas Beach Lilies Breakfast on Saturday Why Words Might Not Even if the Big Questions are Hard to Answer The Failing Light Autumn Salthouse Church Nightingale Winter Afternoon in Hampden Park The Anchor Remembrance Sunday Garra Rock Held Kispum Conundrum Carrion The Hour of the Wolf Cobwebs Between Things The Words to Say It My Father’s Tin Box The Fruit of Poetry Postcard of a Swan The Necessity of Judas Where We Begin The Words for Home Summer afternoon at the Cuckmere Miles from Litlington

About the Author :
Lisa Dart was born in Cornwall, but grew up in Orpington, Kent in England. After working for both the Open University and the University of Sussex for many years, she combines writing poetry with her commitment to gifted children as Head of Curriculum Enhancement at St Bede’s School. Her chapbook was published by Tall Lighthouse in 2005 and she was one of the four winners for the USA Grolier Prize 2004. Many of her poems have appeared in British poetry magazines. She has recently completed a doctorate in poetry and philosophy at the University of Sussex.