'I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally
become clear to me - or else that I didn't live much longer!' Clarity or
Death! takes its title from this letter of Wittgenstein's. That desire
for clarity in our knowledge of the world, the universe and ourselves is
the linking preoccupation of Jeffrey Wainwright's collection. Five poems
develop the physicist Richard Feynman's proposition that through
scientific study 'we may be able to reduce the number of different
things'. Others ponder infinity and number; the 39-poem sequence 'Mere
Bagatelle' explores the philosopher Jerry Fodor's assertion that ours is
a world 'that isn't for anything, a world that is just there', yet one
he can still call 'austere, tragic, alienated and supremely
beautiful'.
These poems are both playful and intellectually rigorous, exploring not
only ideas but the experience of having and articulating them. They play
alongside other aspects of personal experience. Central to Wainwright's
writing is a fascination with what Wallace Stevens called 'the uncertain
light of single, certain truth', an uncertain light embodied in the
sensuousness of language given poetic form.
Cover image Leonid Lerman, Censor, 2002. Cover design by Stephen Raw.
