Martin Nakell

Unnamed Martin Nakell

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.