{"product_id":"eliot-cardinaux-the-ocean-from-here-to-here","title":"Eliot Cardinaux: The Ocean from Here to Here","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eThe Ocean from Here to Here\u003c\/em\u003e, poet and improvising musician Eliot Cardinaux approaches poetry and poetics through stark lenses of abandonment, madness, and itinerance, asking oblique questions, and avoiding straightforward answers altogether, exploring an interiority rife with the world. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e‘Eliot Cardinaux, in his latest collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Ocean from Here to Here\u003c\/em\u003e, lays bare what it means to live and create and walk through a world where pain and loss are as inescapable as love. He begins with a journey: “I am tired, tired of carrying you \/ around in my heart. My pockets \/\/ are stuffed with tickets. Buses, \/ trains. At every chance I empty them.” Mile by mile, the poet’s voice carries the reader through articulate meditations with a searing vulnerability: “I can’t but get the feeling \/ that you’re praying for me. \/\/ Approach me at the edges. \/ You will never reach me.” A provocation of the heart that feels everything that matters and refuses to turn its back.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e  —Suzanne Mercury, author of \u003cem\u003eHive\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e‘Eliot’s poetry carries the weight of its own ambivalence. Why would anyone bother to say that silence would do to express what need be? Why not just have the silence? Words, their music, are what we gift silence in reciprocity for what it boundlessly offers. Eliot’s offerings ask where we come from, where we are, and where we go. It is a cautionary gift. These poems say \u003cem\u003eyes\u003c\/em\u003e to leaping but remember \u003cem\u003eleap\u003c\/em\u003e’s link to \u003cem\u003eledge\u003c\/em\u003e, to that ground which holds us while it spins and crumbles, reformulating itself beneath us.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e  —Jo Ianni\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e‘“I’ve been thinking about the poem as island, lying between question \u0026amp; answer, being \u0026amp; becoming.” Eliot Cardinaux’s poems emerge from this most basic dialectic, simply stated but growing more and more complex, more and more mysterious. Their complexity lies in the tangles of thought and feeling; their mystery lies in the twists and turns of language. “Song feigns a sovereign \/ faith,” and couplet upon couplet, perhaps if that deception is maintained successfully, we can hear the truth.’\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e  —Norman Finkelstein, editor of \u003cem\u003eRestless Messengers\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003eEliot Cardinaux is a poet, pianist, composer, and translator working at the intersection of the lyric and improvised music. The author of \u003cem\u003eOn the Long Blue Night\u003c\/em\u003e (Dos Madres, 2023); and the trio of \u003cem\u003eQuiet Labor\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eToy Elegy\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThis Music From Another Room\u003c\/em\u003e; as well as numerous chapbooks, Eliot has produced over a dozen albums of original music, including \u003cem\u003eAmerican Thicket\u003c\/em\u003e (Loyal Label, 2016) with Mat Maneri, Thomas Morgan, and Flin van Hemmen; \u003cem\u003ePavane\u003c\/em\u003e (Bodily Press, 2022); \u003cem\u003eOut of Our Systems\u003c\/em\u003e (Bodily Press, 2022); and most recently, \u003cem\u003eImminence\u003c\/em\u003e (self-released, 2024), with percussionist Gary Fieldman. He is the founding editor of The Bodily Press.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Bodily Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48873771598017,"sku":"","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0807\/8786\/5793\/files\/THEOCEANFROMHERETOHERECOVER.jpg?v=1735398935","url":"https:\/\/bodilypress.com\/products\/eliot-cardinaux-the-ocean-from-here-to-here","provider":"The Bodily Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}