Caesura

By on Sep 8, 2013 in Poetry

Silhouette jumping over a gap with superimposed word art

To write the word is to not write in the space where the most important part of nothing occurs.
In the Middle Ages there were no spaces.    No one read silently.    Everything written had to be
                            read aloud to be understood.    Some say a deeper consciousness came
                                                                              with the insertion of
                                                                                        the space,

                                                                         and deep solitary reading
                                                                                         was born.

                                          “The human mind became not only literate but literary.”1

Ask the painter with his plain canvas about his process. How he starts with nothing then adds something, but there must always be nothing between any further something he might add. 
Or more succinctly,
                                                      something    nothing    something    nothing. 

The integrity of the picture plane remains intact. Its two-dimensional shape unbounded while a gradient shadow belies the eye to read a third dimension. Not to mention impasto, which can actually cast a shadow across something and nothing in the right light. The paint applied thickly with a palette knife.
                                                                   
                                                                    Please pause here and reflect. 

There is more we do not know than what we think we know about the brain. How do the sense organs expand to understand the environmental stimulus formerly known as red? How does the taste of a cookie dipped in lime blossom tea recall seven volumes of a life? Does Karl Pibram’s holographic model still apply where every part contains a memory of the whole between the spaces?
                           Insert a synapse and    neurotransmitter    to start the memory retrieval process.
                                                                     Consult an expert on the matter.

                                                                     If you’re hungry have a cookie
            before you shift from page to screen, and hope we do not lose the neural circuits that allow
                                               the rich interpretive read and thus are forced to reinvent
                                                                     the cereal box decoder ring.

  

1.  Nicholas Carr, AS TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES, DEEP READING SUFFERS, SFGATE.COM SUNDAY, JUNE 20, 2010

 

 

About

Born in Oklahoma, Marilyn Ringer now resides in Northern California. She received a BA in Social Sciences and an MA in Experimental Psychology, both from Southern Methodist University. She has been a chef and restauranteur, a poet-teacher with California's Poets In The Schools, and a teacher of adult creative writing workshops. During the summer, she spends extended time on Monhegan Island in Maine, where she writes with a group of women who are artists, teachers, Gestalt therapists, and gardeners, as well as writers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod; Drumvoices Revue; Eclipse; Left Curve; Red Wheelbarrow Literary Magazine; Hawai'i Pacific Review; Sanskrit; Porcupine; Wisconsin Review; The Evansville Review; Cairn; Bayou; decomP; The Cape Rock; ellipsis; The Hurricane Review; Limestone; The MacGuffin; Mochila Review; Oregon East; Phantasmagoria; Poet Lore; Assissi; Reed Magazine; poemmemoirstory (PMS); River Oak Review; Westview; Willard & Maple; Folio; The Griffin; RiverSedge; Willow Review; The Binnacle; Diverse Voices Quarterly; Chico News & Review; Slant; Studio One; Eclectica; Quiddity Literary Journal; Clackamas Literary Review; Xavier Review; Watershed; Iodine Poetry Journal; ByLine; California Quarterly; Milk Money; Pisgah Review; Schuylkill Valley Journal; Sierra Nevada College Review; Squaw Valley Review; Pearl; Taproot Literary Review; Tar Wolf Review; Poet's Cove, An Anthology: Monhegan in Poetry, 2000-2002 (New Monhegan Press, 2003); The Art of Monhegan Island (Down East Press, 2004); Chico Poets, A Calendar for 2005 (Bear Star Press, 2004); and her chapbook, Island Abaude (Finishing Line Press, 2012).