The etymology of the word JAWN is a JAWN.
Full of descriptions of everyday life in the city that birthed and holds captive use of its title, JAWN by Mark Danowsky, Moonstone Press 2022, is a collective rendering of qualia.
Simplistically, qualia can be described as the nature of what an individual experiences when they see, taste, hear, touch, or smell. Qualia is the content of one’s subjective experience. In other words, qualia are a JAWN, and Danowsky has invited us to enter his.
Danowsky wastes no time setting the scene and tone with a perfunctory comparison of Philadelphia in his initial poem. It is one stanza and compares Philadelphia, a city whose culture is difficult for even the deeply entrenched to describe, to Bangladesh. Crumbling buildings. Poor blameless victims. Trapped.
This initial poem’s mood heightens the readers readiness for this elemental depravity which continues to build in angst and emotive momentum through the third poem. “Sleep Deprived” juxtaposes scenes of homelessness with those of affluence which adds to the emotional dissonance.
Danowsky takes advantage of this tug-of-war like imbalance and places his longest poem, Snapshots, in the middle of the collection. This three sectioned poem re-builds the reader's hope with the infusion of Spring, bright colors, and the sounds of a community that retains small moments of innocence. While this isn’t the last offering of hope the collection provides, it is tempered by two nostalgic poems; one about Danowsky’s youth the other a musing:
and I double-take
wondering what kind of kid
he used to be
& what kind still dwells within
Danowsky’s JAWN is a conversation about the state of being in Philadelphia and gives voice to the unspoken traumas that equate to poverty, violence, and homelessness. It provides a prescient warning and is necessary reading for those who may prefer to look the other way.
Katch Campbell is a connector. With a master’s degree in Science and an MFA in poetry, she creates metaphors for her patients and others about the world around us. Her work is an inquiry on the atrocities we commit consciously and unconsciously against each other and the universe. Katch serves as Vice President and is a permanent faculty member at the River Pretty Writing Retreat, a bi-annual workshop in the Ozarks. She has co-led immersive poetry trips to Slovenia and Italy and used to edit for ZoMag.com.