ISSUE XXXIX August 2025
edited by George Mario Angel Quintero
Events of every size and aspect are continually becoming our experiences, and we have no idea which of these will shape us. The unpredictability of sources, of what we will remember as living, is still surprising.
Poetry is the spark of contact between consciousness and an event. Poetry is as close to creating experience as we can get. I did not say sensation, I said experience. The mind is not a screen, it is a place. It does not swallow an event, it mediates it. The mind does not stop, is not necessarily looking for new material, and certainly is not interested in receiving a world of sensation. The mind wants equal billing for having created the world.
In much of poetry, the context appears to be talking. That is to say, the voice comes from everything around the figure rather than from the figure itself. The dark forest is so often the protagonist. Meaning lies as much in tone as it does in something told. Tone and voice move and change strategies in time. Are they strategies of resistance or strategies of survival?
Rhythm and timbre are as present in choice of content as they are in vocabulary and phrasings. Proportion, perspective, and measure become musical tests for truth. The oscillation between simplicity and complexity frees these texts from being useful, in the sense that they cannot be used to make people do things beyond living them. They were not written to make people do things. They were written to make people live moments, and perhaps, see things.
Then we come to the topic of beauty. These texts are beautiful. It seems to me that beauty is embedded in the concept of harmony. Harmony is the relationship between simultaneous elements. It has to do with how these elements are tuned to play off each other. Something about the evolving relationship between elements that are also changing reminds us of the simultaneity of living. Resonance is how we express form in time.
I am very proud of this issue of Verseville. Each piece complements the others. The two essays provide an important backdrop of lives lived to the music in the poetry. In it is some of the best poetry being written today. I am very grateful to the participating poets for agreeing to be part of it. The fact that these poets even exist today is, in and of itself, already an instance of resistance and independence.
George Mario Angel Quintero
Poetry is the spark of contact between consciousness and an event. Poetry is as close to creating experience as we can get. I did not say sensation, I said experience. The mind is not a screen, it is a place. It does not swallow an event, it mediates it. The mind does not stop, is not necessarily looking for new material, and certainly is not interested in receiving a world of sensation. The mind wants equal billing for having created the world.
In much of poetry, the context appears to be talking. That is to say, the voice comes from everything around the figure rather than from the figure itself. The dark forest is so often the protagonist. Meaning lies as much in tone as it does in something told. Tone and voice move and change strategies in time. Are they strategies of resistance or strategies of survival?
Rhythm and timbre are as present in choice of content as they are in vocabulary and phrasings. Proportion, perspective, and measure become musical tests for truth. The oscillation between simplicity and complexity frees these texts from being useful, in the sense that they cannot be used to make people do things beyond living them. They were not written to make people do things. They were written to make people live moments, and perhaps, see things.
Then we come to the topic of beauty. These texts are beautiful. It seems to me that beauty is embedded in the concept of harmony. Harmony is the relationship between simultaneous elements. It has to do with how these elements are tuned to play off each other. Something about the evolving relationship between elements that are also changing reminds us of the simultaneity of living. Resonance is how we express form in time.
I am very proud of this issue of Verseville. Each piece complements the others. The two essays provide an important backdrop of lives lived to the music in the poetry. In it is some of the best poetry being written today. I am very grateful to the participating poets for agreeing to be part of it. The fact that these poets even exist today is, in and of itself, already an instance of resistance and independence.
George Mario Angel Quintero
