There are moments in literary culture when one senses, however faintly, that something is about to remain exactly as it is, but with unusual significance.
Such a moment may now be upon us, as C. Langley Dunwood’s newest work, The Way Of It, enters consideration for the summer issue of The Seasloth Review.
We are grateful to the critic Joanie Offpiste for the following early appreciation of what may prove to be one of the season’s quietest literary events. But first — the poem.
The Way Of It
It is a Tuesday in the particular light
and I am simply standing
the way certain people
have always somehow stood
at thresholds,
quietly allowing
what remains
to remain.
The woman at the counter
does not have small white hands.
She has hands that know
what hands know
when no one
is finally watching.
The most meaningful thing about her hands
is what they carry home
and the most meaningful thing about what they carry home
is the weather and the water
and the way the water
simply is
what water
has always already been.
I carry this.
We carry this.
The bread on the worn table
says what bread
has always already said
in the particular silence
of an ordinary room
that is
in its way
extraordinary.
The most meaningful thing about the bread
is the table beneath it
and the most meaningful thing about the table
is the weather and the water
and the hands
that quietly knew
before the knowing.
Outside the rain
is doing the thing rain does
when you are ready.
I fold this day
the way a letter
folds into itself,
the way a body
learns its grief,
the way a Tuesday
in the particular light
simply
allows
what it always
somehow
already knew
to go on
being
still.
The most meaningful thing about the stillness
is that it was always
the weather and the water.
It was always
just
that.
_________________
The Verdict Is In
Rarely does a contemporary voice so fearlessly inhabit the quietude of the liminal. In this breathtakingly sparse masterwork, the poet dismantles the aggressive tyranny of modern syntax, offering instead a devastatingly quiet ontology of the everyday.
Notice the brave, near-heroic minimalism of “simply standing.” Lesser poets feel an insecure need to move. Here, the speaker understands that the ultimate rebellion against late-capitalist hyper-productivity is absolute, stationary stagnation.
The genius lies in its linguistic recursion. The bread does not merely sit; it interrogates the table. The table, in its stoic woodenness, absorbs the weather. The poet achieves a post-semantic sublime. Water is water. To name it further would be an act of linguistic violence.
The sudden, shattering invocation of the somatic — “the way a body learns its grief” — drops into the poem like a lead weight into a calm pond.
The Way Of It does not merely mean; it is. — Joanie Offpiste, The Journal of Threshold Studies
_________________
Advance Praise for The Way Of It
“Dunwood asks of Tuesday what few have dared ask of any weekday.” – Megan Juniper
“A work of such hushed precision it recalls the interiors of Vermeer — light falling across objects that seem to know they are being observed.” – Trudy Ann McMiles
“Dunwood achieves what only Hammershøi has managed in paint: rooms in which stillness becomes a kind of argument.” – Piet Thaal
“A triumphant, quiet masterpiece of the static arts.” – Gurdeep Guzundah
“— a sonic Ferris wheel for the soul” – Bobbie Beam
“At last, a poetics equal to moisture.” – Pippa Crane
“It bravely dares to be about absolutely everything by being about absolutely nothing.” – Herbert Wales
“I had to sit very still for three days after reading this.” – Blythe Fen
_________________
It’s encouraging to see literary journals continue to perform their essential cultural function: identifying those rare works capable of transforming weather into weather with uncommon seriousness. At a moment when so much contemporary writing remains trapped in the crude expectation that poems should observe, describe, or communicate, The Seasloth Review has shown admirable willingness to support work of a quieter and more stationary ambition.
Few recent poems have so rigorously explored the ontological possibilities of bread remaining on tables. Fewer still have trusted readers sufficiently to leave water entirely to itself.
We are therefore heartened by The Seasloth’s evident courage in considering C. Langley Dunwood’s The Way Of It for publication. In an era too often dominated by noise, movement, and the vulgar demand for intelligibility, such editorial resolve deserves recognition.
The summer issue is expected later this season, weather and water permitting. We understand that final editorial decisions are being made in the particular light.
