Electric in a Dense World by Dan Hedges

Into ‘the thoughts’ we project bias at all moments, while we forge our word-trances, electric in a dense world of colored noise.  Metaphors are for phoring, and jousting at semantics at full charge.  Sustaining vision after the original shot of noticing ‘new spectacle’ and ‘new fodder’, is the key.  It’s in the sustaining of vision (and) in the follow through.  It’s in the ‘holding it’ just long enough so as to corral the flowing gaze at thoughts and give them agrammatical justice.  Whereas the past and future are of equal magnitude, the self at present sits at the very focal point of the conundrum.   Complexity infinitum passes through the self at volumes and speeds that cannot be registered or ‘dealt with’ satisfactorily.  To remain in a strong state of physical sanity (remember the orchids), the humanimal must settle with reaching out into the semantic storm, and plucking at only bits of the puzzle to hold close for observation and further wondering.

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© Dan Hedges

Dan Hedges currently teaches English in the Sir Wilfred Laurier School Board of Quebec. He has also taught English at Sedbergh School, and the Celtic International School. He has lived in the Yukon, Spain, Mexico, Wisconsin, Algonquin Park and Quebec. Dan runs an artist collective called Humanimalz. His poems have appeared in The Maynard, Ditch Poetry, Jones Av. Quarterly, Fortunates, Haggard and Halloo, Rigormortus, and The Camel Saloon. His work is forthcoming in The Monarch Review, Marco Polo Arts Magazine, Inertia, and Wildflower Magazine.

WRITER’S STATEMENT

I want to describe my word-smithing as subversive, literal, aesthetic, personal, universal, spiritual, intense, and hopeful. For me, poetry is a created texture, best experienced in the agrammatical mind. In my view, the power of poetry has a lot to do with archetypes, and allowing mind-scapes to form beautifully, by force of words. Like music, or visual art, I believe there to be many healing qualities invoked and evoked through mindful poetry. Native American tradition and world-view has certainly affected my life and writing in a huge way, which often alludes to animal spirits colliding with ‘humanimal’ realities. I am also intrigued by an aesthetic paradigm that I call ‘field guide aesthetics’ which attempts to reconcile new world nomenclature, with complex spirit worlds that span greater epochs.