What Passes For Answers

People are in constant search for answers. They continue to find meaning behind every phenomena there is. May it be for their own conscience’s sake or for what to tell people around them. “What Passes For Answers?” is a collection of poems by Mikael de Lara Co which claims to answer life’s most hardest questions and to portray human experience. In understanding this collection of poems, the reader is faced to apprehend the art of poetry and language in connection to the persona’s experiences and thoughts in what passes for answers. The gesture of the collection is to collectively name and look for words at the same time make metaphors and explain through imagery and poetry the answers that can embody everything. This collection also attempts to outline the function of the poet and poetry to society.

Everything is embodied by the attempt of certainty. The persona continues to look for answers as a way to have something to hold on and give comfort in this world where change is inevitable. Certainty is always an illusion. It’s so real, so overwhelming and so raw. In a world where the nature of life is that everything moves and changes, ebbs and flows, with beginnings, middles, and ends. None of the things that seem secure and safe are guaranteed to endure – not forever, or for any length of time, for that matter. In this case, having a sense of certainty in life means not being afraid to live. The possibility of certainty, desires for explanation of the human experience. The power of certainty is the power of life. It is the one responsible in keeping society alive, in attempting things, and in achieving one’s desires. It is what awakens curiosity and encourages the idea of risk. When almost nothing's there, what is certainty? Certai...

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...otional assurance over many years or decades. Poetry imparts the comforting sense that we are on familiar ground, that we have the perceptual tools to make sense of what we are encountering. The essential social function of poetry is first, the most obvious function, – to give answers. A poem must perform this function if it is to perform any. Poetry occurs between primaries, the page and the mind, and the world and the word. More than a thing, it is a transference of energy between poles. Poetry’s task is to mitigate but to mitigate by way of accelerant: it too becomes primary in range from rivaling the world to near exclusion and or/ creation of it, to a humble transparency that adds nothing but clarity. Behind every question and thought in uncertainty we can still hold on to some meaning through poetry. What passes for answers? Poetry is what passes for answers.