Author Description

The artists included in this Journal are not like the Georgian poets writing nice,bucolic or pastoral poems around 1910. On the contrary, the contributors selected for Harvests of New Millennium are deeply aware of two World Wars, anarchy, terrorism, and the postmodern obsession with destruction of meaning. Ezra Pound had understood the need for reviving English poetry: I doubt if any of us in 1911 clearly articulated the proposition: there ought to be an active literature for if this literature be not active, a nation will die at the top (Polite Essays, 1937). It is a matter of great consolation that even though the scope of terror has enlarged, the poets and artists have not stopped composing their works. This is quite evident from a very large number of poems and artwork received by me for this Journal. This is a good sign for the survival of humanism, love and spiritual values. It is one of the horrors of our times that tragedy has become commonplace, almost banal (Patric Dickinsion). No doubt, Poetry by raising its voice to the height of the heavens is powerful enough to provide a healing touch to our soul, hurt in some vital part, due to the fret and fury of the contemporary barbarism. Another significant thing about several poets and artists included in Harvests of New Millennium is their quest for some timeless existence, and a nostalgia for the impossible, a quest for the world of intellect and spirit. The postmodern would be that which in the modern invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself, that which refuses the consolation of correct forms, refuses the consensus of taste permitting a common experience of nostalgia for the impossible, and inquires into new presentations-not to take pleasure in them, but to better produce the feeling that there is something unpresentable (Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 1984).