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An exploration of religion, thought, and what
it means to be an inquisitor, this work takes us on a demanding journey
toward understanding. The means by which one gets there, however, challenge
tradition and complacency.
The genesis of this poem occurred while in
an exhibit on Islam in a Toronto museum. It suddenly dawned on me the
power of monotheism: a single, all-powerful, immaterial god makes the
believer always in possession of truth and power, no matter how far from
home. While European and Roman expansionism cannot be attributed solely
to religion, Christian monotheism did, I think, play a part.
I did some research. I came to see the advent of Christianity in Rome
as not a wholly negative event; however, it ultimately destroyed the more
anarchic paganism in the name of a unifying system. Since I place the
source of political liberty and artistic creation in the pole of human
organization termed anarchism, this was a negative event indeed.
The poem traces my struggles with an through these issues and associated
ones. So the poem is a comic wrestle: I as poet am too small and desperate
to 'understand' the history -- which includes me -- in the traditional
Western sense of the word. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty has pointed out, Western
philosophy aims to dominate being. The same can be said of some of its
most celebrated poetry. This way of approaching experience not only seems
impossible to me, but also dangerous.
So I offer these traces, these tangents, these parcels of thought, words,
mystification. I hope to open more than close.
But to insist on openness is itself a form of tyranny.
--JH
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