Caesurae: from here to Herakleitos
Alan Loney
Introduction by Michael Harlow
Published by Plumb Press, April 2025
ISBN 978-1-7638842-0-5
152 x 229 mm
Paperback
56 pages
CAESURAE continues Alan Loney’s engagement with the sayings of Herakleitos, with a few tentative translations with additions & elaborations of some of the testimonia, the stories others tell about the ancient Greek philosopher – these speculations wind in & out of perceptions of the present as well as small, precise snapshots of the past, especially of the poet’s childhood – but always there is a profound doubting at the heart of even the clearest or apparently obvious of assertions – a shifting memory, a shifting present, a shifting language – as if there is something to be said, yet every aspect of our life & language speaks against it – here is the poem as a pause in itself, a gap, a shred, a mere token of the life any of us have to live.
Alan Loney’s new work is infused with the tastes and scents of he ancient world: its title, its invocation, much of the diction, and the citations from classical authors. It is infused too with tastes and scents of the utterly contemporary: the shorthand of txt-speak, citations from current-era authors, the instruction to THINKTHANKTHINKTHANK. The writing has a captivating openness and, in its drawing together and reflecting on the philosophical musings of more than 2000 years, it offers a calming sense of deep connectedness. It takes poetry into and out of words, to somewhere both very fresh, and very old, but largely (til now) forgotten.
— Jen Webb, University of Canberra
Is nature continuous or discontinuous, an unbroken flow or a cascade of disjunctions? A caesura is a prosodic halt, an interruption within the surge of a line or a foot, a break within sense or breath that is nonetheless a condition of the very rhythm of expression. So Caesurae tells of unusable currency spinning in infinite air, words that fly to eat from the hands of a stranger, chiaroscuro residues of ancient enmities, the celebration of strife and discordancy, the flitting incisions of come and go. Loney’s poem is like a matrix formalizing what does not exist.
— Justin Clemens, University of Melbourne
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