The mandorla is the place of poetry. It is the duty of a true poet to take the fragmented world that we find ourselves in and

The mandorla is the place of poetry. It is the duty of a true poet to take the fragmented world that we find ourselves in and to make unity of it. In the Four Quartets, writes, “The fire and the rose are one.” By overlapping the two elements of fire and a flower, he makes a mandorla. We are pleased to the depth of our soul to be told that the fire of transformation and the flower of rebirth are one and the same. All poetry is based upon the assertion that this is that. When the images overlap, we have a mystical statement of unity. We feel there is safety and sureness in our fractured world, and the poet has given us the gift of synthesis. Great poetry makes these leaps and unites the beauty and the terror of existence. It has the ability to surprise and shock – to remind us that there are links between the things we have always thought as opposites.

All language is a mandorla: a well structured sentence is of this nature. That is probably why we talk so much: good talk restores unity to a fragmented world.

Robert A. Johnson