Description
Poetry. In THE CALCULUS OF IMAGINARIES, Gerard Grealish explores in poetry not only the elusive and transitory aspects of the physical world, but also our misperceptions of what "reality" is and the ramifications of discovering that it is otherwise, and largely unknowable. Within the uncertainties of such inner and outer worlds there emerges alternately from time to time a litany of anger, frustration, sorrow, guilt, pain, tragedy, and death, but also love and beauty. Addressing El Niño, the climate phenomenon, as if it were indeed a child, Grealish asks in the poem "El Niño 1997," "Whose child are you anyway?" and receives in Spanish the answer "I don't know! I don't know!" finding the child's words and inflections paradoxically beautiful. Such paradoxes abound as Grealish takes the reader in five sections through the "Imaginary Roots" of things and people, their existence as "Infinitesimals," "The Transfer Principle" that often reshapes them, the "Impossible Conditions" they are confronted with, and the "Transcendent Curves" that take them to another place. Grealish's poetry in this volume metaphorically reenacts Webster's definition of the book's abstractly mathematical title, to wit: "a method of investigating the nature of imaginary quantities required to fulfill apparently impossible conditions, using √-1 [the square root of negative one] as a unit."
Author Bio
Gerard Grealish, over the years, worked in factories and Alaskan fisheries, kitchens and libraries. He taught in high school and colleges and, more recently, has served as a court-appointed criminal defense attorney for indigent defendants. In the course of his various occupations, he has written poetry, plays, and prose. He has traveled and promoted jazz at his home (affectionately known as "The OokaburraBird Jazz Club") and as a member of The Ralph Hughes Memorial Jazz Scholarship Fund that operates out of a famous jazz club that he frequents, the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. His plays have been performed at the University of Scranton and the Lackawanna County Prison, his poems published in numerous literary magazines. Founder of the Mulberry Poets & Writers Association, he chaired the editorial board for its anthology Palpable Clock: 25 Years of Mulberry Poets.
Author City: SCRANTON, PA USA