Venturing into Space
Letter from Co-Editor Caroline Langston
For some days now, I’ve had the phrase space is the place stuck in my mind. Like some kind of a mantra or koan (or maybe even my own tradition’s Jesus Prayer), its initial dactyl slapping up and down my breathing, back and forth.
I suppose the reason for this has to do with the recently renewed media attention to Afrofuturism (be sure to check out the amazing work of Funfere Koroye in this issue, by the way), and the prescience of the dystopian work of Octavia Butler. Which led me to think about Afrofuturist jazz pioneer Sun Ra, who had an album with that exact title: Space is the Place.
It occurs to me that “space” might well be a good frame to think about so many of the works in this issue of Vita Poetica. So many of the selections from this issue seem to turn on, or to depend on the contrast of, a perceptible effort to move beyond the clutter of contemporary existence, and to go out beyond its seam. To find, yes: Space.
Right off the bat, Charlene Langfur’s “The Poem in the Middle of Everywhere” offers a dramatic illustration. In contrast with the “[s]ome days” where [she] is “here with exactly everything”:
Choirs and bombs, money and nothing at all,
a lesbian’s long life, writing poems at dawn,
a lifetime passing in the blink of an eye,
betrayals and love all at the same moment
Then there’s a break—the “but”—and there’s suddenly this:
but here this winter in the desert where I am,
the winter garden on my porch flourishes
as if for the very first time, aloe, fluent, tall,
the tiny purple flowers on heather, giants to the eye.
We see an analogous break in Wayne Bornholdt’s poem “Recipe,” in which the protagonist leaves behind a burning calf—presumably an offering—and also the certainty in doing so.
There’s the felt space that emerges between “Catholic School” and “God” in E. R. Skulmoski’s poem “In Catholic School.” The theme of space traces through the two other of Skulmoski’s poems in this issue, “Daughters of Eve, Eat This Scroll,” in which the protagonist finds herself “cast out,” and the heartbreaking space left in the wake of Canada’s wildfires in “Elegy.” In Caleb Westbrook’s “On a Shore Weighing What Matters,” the protagonist finds himself diminished to the space inside, against the exigencies of sublime nature outside.
Sometimes the notion of space comes in the form of contrast: Jennifer Lendvai-Lintner’s essay “A Mother’s Prayer” traces through the influences of the Rosary and the Virgin Mary on her own experiences of motherhood, and the ways it has left her full and empty—fitting for the Mother of Jesus whom Eastern Christians call, believe it or not, “More Spacious than the Heavens.”
And maybe the space is more of an emotional one–a clearing-out in order to find the truth, which you’ll see in Roberta Murphy’s haunting, Wales-set “You Didn’t Love Me.”
Finally, even our Contemplative Practice feature this issue has us opening our eyes onto new vistas, in new ways—”Meditation through a Window.” Wherever you are, in whatever state you’re in, perhaps you can go to a window and try it right now.
