Click here for the archived issue of Vol.1 Num.1
An Introduction
Socrates kicked the poets out of the city because they lied about the gods for the sake of beauty. As he saw it, logic dictated the drastic move. Insofar as poets once valued beauty and harmony over and above truth and justice, he felt he had no choice.
We postmoderns are forever attempting to convince the Socrates in us to let the poet in us back into a honored place in the city. For us, the global city is poetry – the rhythms of its neighbourhoods, the heart beat of the residents, the hum of its economic engine. Many tongues, smells, sights, and tastes emanate from the circuits of capital, commodities, services and people. In the global city you can relish the poetry of diversity and cosmopolitanism.
The launch of the Atonal Poetry Review marks an exciting occasion. APR presents a world-wide platform and home for inspired poetry – as J. P. Farrell has put it – that “falls beyond the rhythms and traditions of the mundane.” Readers can expect to be challenged and moved, taken-aback and stimulated. In the months and years ahead, APR will build a comfortable place for the poet to be poetic in the global age.
As we move forward, we need to remember that Socrates was reluctant when he banished the poets from the ideal state. While he found the very prospect of a city without poets distasteful, he felt he had little choice because they insisted on making beauty indistinguishable from truth. However, he always held on to the hope, and left open the possibility, that there would one day be poets who would stand for the beauty of truth rather than the truth of beauty – poets who risk being atonal.
We welcome poetry back to the global city!
Lorne Foster, Ph.D.
York University
Toronto, Canada
Socrates kicked the poets out of the city because they lied about the gods for the sake of beauty. As he saw it, logic dictated the drastic move. Insofar as poets once valued beauty and harmony over and above truth and justice, he felt he had no choice.
We postmoderns are forever attempting to convince the Socrates in us to let the poet in us back into a honored place in the city. For us, the global city is poetry – the rhythms of its neighbourhoods, the heart beat of the residents, the hum of its economic engine. Many tongues, smells, sights, and tastes emanate from the circuits of capital, commodities, services and people. In the global city you can relish the poetry of diversity and cosmopolitanism.
The launch of the Atonal Poetry Review marks an exciting occasion. APR presents a world-wide platform and home for inspired poetry – as J. P. Farrell has put it – that “falls beyond the rhythms and traditions of the mundane.” Readers can expect to be challenged and moved, taken-aback and stimulated. In the months and years ahead, APR will build a comfortable place for the poet to be poetic in the global age.
As we move forward, we need to remember that Socrates was reluctant when he banished the poets from the ideal state. While he found the very prospect of a city without poets distasteful, he felt he had little choice because they insisted on making beauty indistinguishable from truth. However, he always held on to the hope, and left open the possibility, that there would one day be poets who would stand for the beauty of truth rather than the truth of beauty – poets who risk being atonal.
We welcome poetry back to the global city!
Lorne Foster, Ph.D.
York University
Toronto, Canada
Search the Archives
The Icicle Asylum
By J.P. Farrell
Published by Atonal Press.
Available as an E-Book
By J.P. Farrell
Published by Atonal Press.
Available as an E-Book
