Logic, Religion, Dolphins

I am, by nature, analytical. This is not to say that I'm always entirely reasonable or rational. I do, however, tend to look at things closely, to attempt to see what lurks below the surface. I realized recently that my poetry is an attempt - subconscious until now - to recontextualize beauty for myself. Actually, it has become something of an obsession for me to take horrifying objects, events, etcetera, and to use language itself to bend them into something different - perhaps even something worth looking at for a long while - something to, as my analytical side insists, figure out.

I'm also deeply interested in the human animal. More precisely, I'm interested in the human as animal. Far too often a gap is posited between the human and the natural - and, if you've noticed, we as a species are always trying to justify our belief in that gap. "Oh, it's our consciousness of the self that sets us apart." Not so. Some primates recognize themselves in mirrors. Is it, perhaps, language? I will grant that the range of language humans have attained is impressive. Dolphins also have an extremely complex language - for it can be called nothing else - with which they express a range of emotions - for they can be called nothing else. Before any attempt at scientific justification of our unique standing in the universe, we turned to religion. "Yes, we are the Chosen People," said the Jews. But, then, weren't Muslims also the Chosen People? Weren't Christians, in turn, also Chosen? Don't all religions believe that they have the truth, and that everyone else - benign as their intentions might be - are simply wrong?

Well, I have a tendency to believe fact. I suppose it is a fault I can blame on nature. Nevertheless, it is this interest in the human animal - and all the beauty, shame, ugliness, importance, impotence, reality, and unreality that is inherent in it - that drives my poetry.

None of this is any more than one possible lens through which to view my words - because words is all I has to play with, as someone (I'm not sure who) once wrote. It could also be the ramblings of a would-be poet who has had one too many drinks on a Friday night.

-the ambassador