Saturday, April 22, 2023

Tanya Rakh, "too short a far shot"

It is with immense delight that I can announce that a new book by Tanya Rakh is going to be available as soon as one of us has seen the proof. It is with great happiness that I announce this & naturally I have done an introductory manifesto. 

This follows, as does the cover. The picture is Tanya's "spiral tree." It is now on sale here, coming to Amazon soon.

EDIT: Here is is at this link on Amazon. Here it is at this very similar link on UK Amazon too. It would be wonderful if you bought from Lulu instead, of course, because Tanya would then get much more money.

Introduction

This book is written as a purge of old ghosts, or Tanya said it was at least. It is her fourth book with Posthuman Poetry & Prose. It speaks of alienation & distances, the incommunicability of intensity. I too know how it feels when organs do not fit in this stupid human skin, & I certainly don't understand capitalism. Tanya, too, has a fish family to look after, we all have something that obliges us to engage with gross & grotesque world.

Anyway, what is purged is things that do not appertain to the now, things that are inessential & already transcended; the machinations of Maya, that what is not, what Mahadevi has done to pass Her time & entertain Herself, because eternal perfection is dull when One is wanton & grows desirous, as She says Herself that She does. Intensity cannot be expressed in any human tongue, but Kali as Matangi can show it to those She favours, so we can step sideways into the light with Her for a while. This book does this, & sings the perfection of the dirty, the impure, the “immaculate dirt”, for everything is essentially divine. The book ends with the chain of return seen as always already perfect, every fall, everything part of Mother with the “huge black eyes”.

For everything is what it is, & this book shows how to approach the essentially incomprehensible nature of what is, the cruel confusion that seemingly is, & these poems delineate a stance to take to the world that allows us to see earth behind it, sustaining & upholding it. Tanya shows that the only way to do this is to relinquish the illusions of humanism & affirm the beast.

Because goddess is always desirous, She always wants things to happen, so there is not going to be any quiescent end state, incarnation is forever, these fleshy transactions, &, like Mr. Fish himself, we shall always carry some false body around, though we are fire & formless, & we belong in Her perfection.

As Tanya points out, the animal sleeps like Maa Kali lives, naked & dressed in space, too large to ever be contained.

Naturally, I advocate the purchase, reading, & regular rereading of this book. I do not interpret it, for it is a manifestation, an expression of the emptiness & the ever-present ghosts, the hungry ghosts, the ghouls at the heart of illusion. It is a very beautiful book & I am sure that Kali is delighted, for it is fire & power, as is She.



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