Amanda Paradise by CAConrad

  

Amanda Paradise has Resurrect Extinct Vibrations as its subtitle, the latter referring to a specific (Soma)tic ritual Conrad used over the course of composing the book. The “resurrect” ritual is a means for Conrad to feel “vibrational absence,” to feel their breath sync with animals made extinct or endangered due to the “altered pattern of our planet’s assembled resonance” caused by “our war against all living beings.” 

 

Of all the striking pieces in the book, the seahorse/Matisse cutout-shaped poems (intoned by a dream voice and Conrad whittling at their notes) forming the first third spoke the most to me. One of these poems, called “Diving into the Premonition,” touches on witch burnings, growing up in rural Kansas and Pennsylvania in the 70s, the internet, and remembering a lost lover, all while modeling these poems’ action: diving into whatever arises in the present space opened up in the act of writing. Each of the poems is justified to the bottom of the page, making that spot the destination of the words, which with their breathy and funny tone nevertheless carry a very heavy subject matter, and land like a diver, or waterfall. 

 

In one such poem, “For the Feral Splendor That Remains,” Conrad asks

This question animated the entirety of my reading of Amanda Paradise, in which CA both insists on the necessity of being present while also mourning tremendous losses (their boyfriend Earth’s murder inspired the Resurrect ritual and the AIDS crisis of the 80s is both explicitly and implicitly present, in addition to the aforementioned attention devoted to extinct and endangered animals). To the former end, they write “when storm blows wig off / my head it simply means / it is time to let the / storm take / its share,” which I misread at first as “its course.” Whichever way the last line is read, there is an acceptance—even a love of—“the / world as it is” that stems from learning from the present moment, in all its grimness, new ways of living and loving, surrendering. We can’t try to “get back” what we’re losing today, but we can use recollection to respond more adequately to the now. The fact is that the planet’s assembled resonance is being beaten down and altered daily by scores of violent forces. How will we find a way to insist on loving the world, despite those losses? 

 

Conrad’s rituals are a way of “tuning into” said present. On the one hand, this is a way of turning “the mind” off, or allowing mind to connect with something deeper or other than the barrage of the world’s news and violence, taking a more meditative stance and appreciating the “motion of an apple in sunshine.” When the present is adequately tuned into, you find a way to “love the world as it is,” as it is taking its course. (It’s this frame of mind that enables Conrad to write: “When you look at me you see / mostly water who will / one day hasten to / join a cloud.”)

 

Not present, the mind can be a “compulsive mechanism” that acts violently. One way it is violent can be when it assumes the voices of violent powers-that-be. Our ideas of things, rather than our present experience of them, so Conrad explains, is at the heart of violence. (“[T]elling someone who they are / instead of asking is where / extinction gets its start.”) In one meditative poem, Conrad remembers the 80s and the atmosphere of violence amid the AIDS crisis:

Here, by surrendering to poetry as opposed to “compulsion’s / mechanism,” Conrad does not step aside from the urgency of the compulsion’s content, nor forget about the state of the world that inspired the compulsion. It’s just that they insist on trusting poetry as a more profound mode of encountering and engaging with the present’s content. 

 

The fact that Conrad remembers the 80s while being ritually present in writing points to another function of being present in the work: to remember (feel the vibrations of) something absent. Several of the poems reflexively begin “in a trance to recall,” narrating the circumstances of the writing and indicating to what or whom the poem is reaching. In this way, being present is complicated by connections with what would otherwise seem to exceed or transcend the present. 

 

Conrad at one point refers to poetry as “the study of everything,” suggesting that purpose of presence is attunement to said everything. So it is that the meditative stance recognizes a more fundamental force at its heart, one that both connects with dreams and recognizes how actions (social, personal, environmental, etc.) in one place affect everywhere else:

 

Ever-present in the poems is a feel for the omnipotence of what is regularly called “a murderous culture,” a feeling for what’s termed “discomfort of the system breaking beneath us” in part of a title. Which brings me back to the original question, or complication: how to be present, while also being present to the reality of violence of the world? One way Conrad answers this question is to declare that language, the poem: “shows us where we stand / it can reveal how we / care about who is / listening and / how or if we / are listening.” They also write: “I choose to love no matter what.”