In The Function of External Circumstances

	Fiction Non-Fiction Poetry Film Art MEB Authors Events Distribution Booksense Contacts<>	In The Function of External Circumstances by Edwin Torres ISBN 978-1-933132-38-9 $12.00 US \| $15.95 CAN Find the book on Amazon> Contemporary poetry can be defined by how far it distances itself from lyric, or what Keats called "silence and slow time."? The Nuyorican performance poet Edwin Torres is celebrated for his work of high energy and verbal brilliance, which has the color and fast pace of freestyling, and that is well represented here. But there is another side to his work that enters directly into the solemnity of "lyric” for instance, "Fall into that brightness / between silence and sun"... from an earlier work, Dig on the Decade.... Torres comes replete, which is difficult to achieve in our time of specialized poetics. His poem Chiaroscuro, here included, begins, "This fire I smell prophetic air — unchanged am I still in this shadow I bought as a child?" ...........Poetry doesn't get any more lovely, dark, and deep than such words, and it reminds us that one of its roles is that of soul-making, in which we encounter with the starkness of truth "the image before us unformed as love is unborn before us." --Paul Hoover

Contemporary poetry can be defined by how far it distances
itself from lyric, or what Keats called "silence and slow
time."?

             The Nuyorican performance poet Edwin Torres is
celebrated for his work of high energy and verbal
brilliance, which has the color and fast pace of
freestyling, and that is well represented here.

                    But there is another side to his work that enters directly into the
solemnity of "lyric” for instance, "Fall into that brightness / between silence and sun"...
from an earlier work, Dig on the Decade....

                                                                  Torres comes replete, which is
difficult to achieve in our time of specialized poetics. His poem Chiaroscuro, here included, begins,

"This fire I smell
prophetic air — unchanged
am I still
in this
shadow I bought as a child?"

                                                ...........Poetry doesn't get any more
lovely, dark, and deep than such words, and it reminds us
that one of its roles is that of soul-making, in which we
encounter with the starkness of truth

"the image before us
unformed
as love is unborn
before us."

                                                            --Paul Hoover