RINGS AROUND SATURN

Rings Around Saturn is a collection of poetry by the Finnish-Lithuanian poet Christian Narkiewicz-Laine; presented in a series of rings that expounds the mystical connection between man and the Universe, dream and reality, love and anguish, mortality and the Divine. Each ring, each verse blends into the next as if it were one continues narrative or stream of consciousness. It is this mystical interconnection, poem to poem, that makes the poet's writing intense, thoughtful, introspective, and a dialogue of universal Existential concerns. In his dialogue, the poet recounts an individual ring of the planet Saturn, contemplating the existence of the Universe—a universe as a whole, as well as its various parts so arranged as to produce a vast array of good and bad effects. In his monologue, the poet often attempts to clarify the chaos to generate an ordered universe (kosmos), while attempting to reveal a mystic insight to the universal aspects of the human mind. Like Plato, Narkiewicz-Laine recounts the beauty of orderliness of the universe, not only as the manifestation of Intellect; but also in a model for rational souls to understand and to emulate. According to the poet, such understanding and emulation restores the soul to its original state of excellence, a state that was lost in their embodiment. There is, then, an explicit and deliberate ethical and spiritual dimension to the poet's discourse. In his dense verse, the poet's voice journeys freely through life's fear, elation, superstition, trepidation, and speculation. All in life, the poet understands—its loves, losses, doubts, stark, most times, brutal awakenings—are but mere signposts along that journey.