Nascent Hue
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Maggie Nelson writes in, Bluets, "There are no instruments for measuring color; there are no 'color thermometers.' How could there be, 'color knowledge' always remains contingent upon an individual perceiver." That Nascent Hue is culled from my own individual perception of color goes without mention, but with these poems I aspire to articulate a "color knowledge" dependent on facets of chromatics such as the relation of color to fragility, loss, and desire. Along with Nelson, the idiom of Nascent Hue is informed by a concept of chromatic particularity derived from 19th-century American authors such as Dickinson, Emerson, and Thoreau. This dossier, in turn has led me to the forms of chromatic experience explored in modern and contemporary poets such as Marianne Moore, John Ashbery, and Elizabeth Willis. I started this project after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder because in an unquiet mind all that seemed to bring relative peace was poetry and colors. I started to embrace that part of my getting better would entail working on a thesis that addressed both aspects of my inner peace, and I began to write poetry that could convey the words I struggled to express in my daily life. To say that Nascent Hue is a project that is solely based on the facets of chromatics would be to undermine the part that colors have played in my own healing. Nascent Hue is a project of healing, one that wants to create a safe space for my mind in a world of colors and language. In Emerson's essay "Nature," he asks, "Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs." My investigation of color's relation to certain concepts -- such as how a color describes displacement, or how a color takes on the characteristics of pain -- seeks to move beyond conventional metaphorical and metonymic collations of color to particular qualities, moods, or emotional states of being. To use Emerson's word, this project is one of "insight": by moving away from those aspects of color that literary custom has reduced to cliche, I hope to move towards aspects of color that are less discernible. The Emersonian disposition of my project is guided by his observation in The Poet, "that the poet did not stop at the color, or the form, but read their meaning; neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought." Emerson's line affirms the central role of the object's movement in generating newer "forms" as constitutive of the task of the poet; the poet conveys the movement of multiplying the same thoughts to become newer ones while simultaneously creating a movement by becoming an "exponent" of these thoughts. My poetry aspires to display the same kinetic movement in building upon each other to become "exponents of a new thought" that begins with the understanding that color plays a crucial role in literature exclusive of its role as a signifier. The three sections of this manuscript are "Fragility," "Loss," and "Desire." Each of which will address color as a product of my grapple with bipolar disorder. These poems strive to convey feelings of fragility, loss, and desire through colors, and connect the inner workings of my mind to the world that I inhabit. Through this project I am attempting to create a "color knowledge" in literature that addresses more than just a color's role as a signifier, I am trying to create a "color knowledge" that addresses the sensitivity chromatics plays in my life.