Extreme Directions

This sequence of poems, evolved from the poet's observation of the daily practice of Tai Chi Sword, evoke the fluidity of martial art practice, the motion of Chinese brushstroke painting or calligraphy, as well as the shifting physical and metaphysical arena that is human relationship. Each poem title is one of the 54 Sword movements, translated from the Chinese by the poet's husband, Wong Yoo-Chong. Tai Chi literally means the outer-most limits, great polarities. Alice Jones's poems articulate the richly various synergies possible between word and phrase, line and space, observer and observed, rational and beyond-rational, in a language that is at once intimate and expansive.