Poetry always has the feel of mysticism and mystery, or maybe this feeling is a stereotype left over from high school literature class. It is generally the result of confusion, lack of time committed to consuming the poetry, and the general difficulty poetry imposes on the reader.<\/p>\n
In V\u00edctor Rodr\u00edguez N\u00fa\u00f1ez\u2019s collection, Every Good Heart is a Telescope<\/em>, he elevates the mysticism and mystery of poetry through people, events, and experiences that we can be begin to understand tangibly through the use of metaphors relating to science, mathematics, inventorship, and space phenomena. Such imagery is equally as mystical and mysterious as poetry itself, but almost everyone has been consumed by science, mathematics, inventorship, or space at some point in their lives, most often during childhood. The reader will immediately become refamiliarized with their dreams of the yesteryear through N\u00fa\u00f1ez\u2019s love affair with the heavens, metaphysics, alchemy, and our unbounded universe.<\/p>\n As an example, my favorite in the collection is a poem entitled Hypothesis<\/em>, describing admiration through great mathematicians and scientists, including the likes of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, Kant, and Hegel:<\/p>\n Ptolemy thought Copernicus came along Then Galileo Kant in turn knew nothing of women As for me Each of N\u00fa\u00f1ez\u2019s poems has similar patterns to that reflected above; they are each fleeting at first glance, but upon a second, third, fourth read, they are universal and infinite in reach. This is partly due to his reliance on images pulled from science, mathematics, philosophy, and metaphysics, each of which have the same unbounded aura. This is also a result of N\u00fa\u00f1ez\u2019s continual practice of directly addressing the reader in his poems. This technique causes each poem to become intimate in a way that I have rarely encountered in poetry.<\/p>\n\n
\nthe world was like certain women\u2019s eyes
\nA sphere of wet crystal
\nwhere each star traces a perfect orbit
\nwith no passion
\n tide or catastrophe<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nwise man who traded breasts for doves
\ncosines for fright
\nand the sun\u2019s pupil became the center of the universe
\nwhile Giordano Bruno crackled
\nto the delight of husbands and priests<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nprobing deeply into young girls\u2019 hearts
\nshipwrecked on good wine
\n\u2014light gathered up by sun\u2014
\nhe raped stars that weren\u2019t from the movies
\nand before dying on a comet\u2019s tail
\nhe declared love to be infinite<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\nprisoner in a butterfly of calculations
\nin metaphysical pollen
\nand for Hegel
\n so abstract
\nthe problem was excessively absolute<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
\n I propose to the twentieth century
\na simple hypothesis
\ncritics will call romantic
\nOh young girl who reads this poem
\nthe world revolves around you<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n