no art, no life

“[D]on’t tell me the otter plays
to distract prey. Don’t tell me
art is caused by evolution.
Don’t tell me art anything.”

So I say, and yet I go on to tell you things about art, and evolution. No worries, you make up your own mind. The poem “No life, no art/no art, no life” questions the idea of natural selection only as an end-all/be-all. Like the second law of thermodynamics: not wrong, but insufficient. Entropy is not the only force at work in this world. There is also a creative force, a self-organizing systemic force, a compulsion to order in living things, which is what makes things alive. Name it what you will.

Clearly this new poem, recently published in full in the RavensPerch, could have been one of my Post-Catholic Midrashim. The book goes to bed, but the book grows on…

Preorders are due early next month, so if you’ve been thinking about it, please kindly preorder here: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/post-catholic-midrashim-by-karina-lutz/