One of you

by Lenar Shaehov

Overall, I am deeply suspicious of Impressionism. As a 19th-century movement in the Arts, it seems to be continually dominated by inconsequential compositions, with far too much emphasis on our ever-changing perspectives – exaggerated, as these occasions are, by the effects of one’s passage through time. This is not to say, of course, that only empirical facts should be the defining feature of aesthetic endeavor. Indeed, the predictably dreary and often bland productions of Soviet-style Social Realism perpetually stand as a grim reminder of this failing. However, “abstraction”, in itself, obviously stretches beyond an insistence on arbitrary sensory adjustments, inordinately detailed atmospheres, or evocative environmental qualities. Truly, our world makes an impression upon the physical senses, but as part of a two-way process; whereby human exteriors struggle against an equal flood of sophisticated substances welling up from inside ourselves. So, editing a series of manifestly Impressionist poems by Lenar Shayeh in his collection One of You was, at first, something of a mixed blessing.