Within each word the world is sufficient Within each word there is an emotion a passion That is the neutral territory of language Whether the emotion is blocked Or liberated Touching on an extensive range of subjects, Unnamed: The Emotions, is a collection of poems which engage an extensive range of sensations - each poem aware of its desire to "express" emotions, while aware of the impossibility of naming, of capturing those emotions, of holding them still long enough to observe them. Instead, the writing, and then the reading, of these poems is an emotional experience itself, one in turn that can't be captured. In "Rain: A Disquisition," for example, the poet, using forms of repetition, attempts to exhaust the emotions that rain evokes in us, from "That rain which is eternity's eternal ice" to "that rain in which friendship becomes eternally silent" to "that rain which forced sight to the limit of the objective world" to "that rain which we listen to, lying inside, all night, all day, appeased." Each poem comes to the realization that emotion, like language, is inexhaustible, that it goes on almost without us, almost, but not quite, that its "unnamability," which at first may seem frustrating or frightening or even melancholy, is its beauty, its strength, its importance.
About the Author: Martin Nakell, the author of 12 books, both poetry and fiction, has won the Gertrude Stein Award in poetry, a National Endowment grant, a Fellowship in Poetry from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and several other grants and fellowships. He was a finalist for the Ronald Sukenick Award in Fiction, the Americas Award in Fiction, and the National Poetry Award. He was Co-Founder and Co-Director of Ischia Arts: The Program in Creative Writing, is Vice-President of the Suzanne Goodman Center for Literature Art & Cuisine, is a Co-Director of the Institute for the Harmony of Science & Poetics. He sits on the National Board of &NOW. He has worked on various journals and presses, including publishing the short-lived but sterling Jahbone Press. He has worked as a chef, a carpenter, and a paralegal. After studying under Robert Creeley at San Francisco State University, he earned a Doctor of Arts at SUNY Albany under William Dumbleton. He lives in Orange, California, where he teaches experimental writing at Chapman University. By way of the critical reception of his work, Angela Genusa writes, in Mad Hatters Review: "Nakell has achieved something in Settlement that is nearly impossible and would likely be disastrous if undertaken by a less skilled writer...to create a unique and ground-breaking work of literature...celebrating...every human's...primal urge to create something from nothing."
