I have a long-enduring fondness for the word “Juxtaposition.” In an early poem using that title, now justifiably forgotten, I wrote “things touch at their edges.” Where things touch, they affect each other; that’s juxtaposition, whether in nature or in art. In this entry I juxtapose a piece of my work with a little more of Levi Romero’s work
Levi Romero’s book, Poetry of Remembrance, focuses, as I discussed previously, on stories and the past, but he includes other more current facets of his life: as teacher and leader of workshops and as an architect – an architect who cannot expect to be welcomed into a home he has designed. In a poem he titles “Juxtaposition” he describes a visit to one such building as it was being built:
may I help you?
I am asked by the realtor
standing at the door,
thinking that I may be the guy
who mixed the mud and pushed the wheelbarrow . . .
I once was asked by a home magazine journalist
if I felt insulted by such incidents
well, no, I said, my mind mixing for an answer
a good batch of cement is never accidental
Romero has learned to live with kindness but close attention on the edge of a culture where others assert that he does not belong.
This “outtake” from my own recent writing uses the term to describe juxtaposition in nature:
Chance
juxtaposing gypsum
deposits, playa, crystals, wind,
forms rolling dunes of white
sand in a brown desert.
in the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico, gypsum washed down from bands in the mountain collects in Lucero Lake, then crystallizes as the lake goes dry, is worn away by wind, and blows into the dunes of White Sands National Monument.
When I think anthropomorphically about God (and sometimes I do, knowing that all language about God is metaphoric) I picture an artist putting different elements of nature together to see what will happen. The result may be wild or wonderful―and totally impractical.
What a powerful word! “Juxtaposition” has taken me from society through poetry to nature and theology. This may explain why I can’t seem to categorize my posts.
freethoughtandmetaphor 
Apr 26, 2012 @ 13:03:41
You said:
“I think anthropomorphically about God (and sometimes I do, knowing that all language about God is metaphoric).”
We have a friend and neighbor on Peaks Island who is descended from a long line of Puritan divines and was raised by missionaries in Korea. She once referred to a religious statement that I mentioned as “metaphoric” and I replied that for most people the statement was literally true or false. Generally people don’t wage wars over metaphors, but shed enormous quantities of blood over what they regard as true.
Apr 26, 2012 @ 14:31:56
I’ve been working on a poem recently in which I claim that most people would rather not move beyond true/false questions. A lot of the world can’t, and especially as it concerns religion. My own view is that God is beyond human language and understanding and therefore can only be discussed through metaphor or analogy. In my view, a god we could understand would not be a god worthy of the name. This is a minority opinion, as you are well aware. I’ll try to go more deeply into it in another post one of these days.