Trusty Servant

Poetry occupies a space that is inaccessible to the mundane world. It can be felt, and thus known within the perceptual processes of those who cannot write it, but it cannot be entered, altered or subverted. Such activities can be pretended, as they now are at the periphery of what remains of the cultural sphere - in the bought and sold universities, for instance, and in various forms of media and performance venue - but these essays and attempts do not compromise poetry, and nor can they. Poetry proves the truth it proclaims, for it is itself that truth. Aesthetic forms, and the languages they are made of, can be defaced and broken, but they, connecting the present to the absolute, regenerate. And they do this regardless of what degenerates around them. Poetry enters, and it alters those who write it and who read it, but that is a one way process. How we respond to poetry is not a conscious choice. That which is essential - the eternity we carry, within ourselves - this responds, as it must, regardless of what we wish, intend or profess. Poetry offers everyone, even the most propagandised and thus lost, a way out of the hell that a failing culture creates. Poetry is a metaphysical engine that, complementing faith, creates and empowers the image of renewal.The Trusty Servant (2022) is Andrew Jordan's third book from Shearsman, the others being Ha Ha (2007) and Hegemonick (2012).