No Mind (Original Poetry)
, authored by Kline, A. S. (contact-email)
The themes of this new collection of original poetry by A. S. Kline echo the traditions of Han-shan's Cold Mountain and the hills of T'ao Ch'ien, conveyed to modernity through exploration of the irreal, the imperceptible, particulate world that underlies the apparent solidity of matter. Where mind meets the material.
The intentionless universe is held to be liberating. Meaning is constructed through attention to the particular - a pattern of pine needles, the flicker of a bird's wings or the bleached bones of a hare in the grass of a limestone plateau. Flesh is the mother of mind, and beauty is the purpose of the flesh.
Language is frequently found to be insufficient. The naming of a thing fails to define it, and the poems probe this rift between semantic categorisation and the true essence of reality.
The violence of humanity and its impact on the natural landscape are also recurrent themes - treated more as consequences of an evolutionary inheritance than of moral failure. We are nevertheless situated as as inseparable from the environment rather than apart from it: “No Mind? All Mind!”
Kline, A. S.
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