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by Scott A. Kass (Author)
The First Scar: A Book of Verse is a compilation of traditional, Romantic Era-style poetry written over some years of particular emotional tumult for the author. Each of the 30 unique works presented herein offer the perspectives of a young man with long-undiagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder, struggling desperately for clarity in a rapidly-clouding and inhospitable world. The lines composed ask questions of the natural world regarding its organization and unconscious composition, the spiritual world regarding its many facets of understanding humankind and morality, and the world of personal strife within the author as he attempts interaction with these.
The subjects addressed in this book are projected with a voice from centuries ago, when poetry was considered music whose melodies were the words themselves. Considering the environment of the modern world, which attempts to modify needlessly the core virtues and values of the past that granted humankind its immeasurable wisdom of thought and action, the author found his poetic voice in the time of industrial infancy; when the technologically-developed territories of the late 1700's to early 1800's discovered convenience through the insatiable invention and deployment of machinery and conveyor belts, several uniquely-minded artists appeared to combat that dangerous mindset of the rejection of humanity for material gain -- in poetry, there were those like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Blake. They beheld the inherent harm of industrialization and how it used human beings as tools until casual disposal, and they wrote lamentations for their haphazard birth at a time when their souls pined for simpler, more-reasonable days long-past. They also were quite unafraid to address religious views that withstood centuries of thoughtless approval and practice, demanding of them to prove their sense and worth in a world when spirituality was sold for quick comforts.
Upon finding and interpreting these old works, the author of this book realized that their endeavors matched his to frightening congruence. Many of their issues with modern living mirrored his own, and those of countless others today. He became convinced that his voice was shared by the same Muse which gave those poets the inner fire which they applied in ink to parchment. Being that such equal hardships as theirs yet remain in his lifetime, the author sought (and still seeks) to explore them in the same fashion as they did two-hundred years ago. It has become a personal mission of paramount importance in his life, and the purpose for his aptitude at writing poetry at all.
A second reason for his fervent creation of poetry is to re-establish what poetry was before Ezra Pound's declaration that it could be absolutely any writing shaped vaguely like a poem. The author thoroughly believes that the genre of poetry has been established for thousands of years, and what is considered 'contemporary poetry' is in fact a third genre whose name was never given. Instead, it was slotted (selfishly) under the category of Poetry rather than instituting its own. To the author of this book, Poetry has form, meter, and less-strictly, rhyme; otherwise, it is a product of that third genre between Poetry and Prose. This distinction has been made more and more vague since Pound's time, and by now, the word Poetry barely means anything. Consider this book as the first "scar" upon a modern brand of "verse" which has long-usurped the ancient art of true poetry.
