Orsorum means a beginning, a start, an undertaking, or the first few words. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the section of Umbrella’s Summer 2008 issue that takes this term as its title proves a treasure trove of transitional poems and themes.

In “The Velvet Dun”, Jackson Lassiter mocks those who “wax poetic of morn” for ignoring the true terrifying potential and power of a shifting time.

Have they never been unnerved
by the impaling dawn, hid
cowering in dread beneath
a yellow blanket’s vain shield?

However, he fails to give those of us who have not hidden (in dread– I assume we have all hidden from morning in irritation) reason to share or at least understand the fear before moving on to his love of “smoky nightfall”, turning what could have been a revelation about the dangers hidden even in rosy-eyed times of transition into just another night-owl-taking-on-early-birds poem, though admittedly an enjoyable one.

By contrast, his “What Do You Do With The Old Stuff?” begins with an attempt to create a transition, through a “purge” of unneeded material possessions. An inability to unload less physical rem(a)inders of the past gets in the way of change. The reasons for this change, displayed in the third paragraph, give this description of stasis its power and relevance.

Patricia Fargnoli’s “‘There is a radiance in each of us—could we but see it.’” uses a line from a poster not only as its title but also to communicate a transition that stands in shimmering counterpoint to the less present transitions of aging: the slow falling into pain and dysfunction of the body, the loss of loved-ones to death. “Yes oh yes, it sizzles in the cleft of my long dormant / sex”.

In “French Movie”, Robert E. Wood valorizes liminal and ambiguous space in film:

…pauses dominate if the goal is Cannes.
Sometimes it’s best if one character speaks no French
and the subtitles are white on white

More significantly, he concludes on a figure frozen in a transition: “someone has paused on a bridge at night”. A bridge works as an extended threshold between two riverbanks or two states; here, remaining on the bridge represents a valuable silence.

The speaker of Enriqueta Carrington’s “Suites for Cello Solo” attempts to use synesthetic music (”sunlit G in major mode”) to reawaken the recently dead. However, even an art that dwells in liminality cannot undo the transition of death once complete.

Rick Mullin’s “Montclair Father, 46″ highlights the ability of the media in general, and photography in particular, to freeze a moment of transition– in this case, a horrific and brutal moment of transition– in time and thus make it possible to be shared again and again. The effect of this is left to the reader to determine, even as the speaker puts down the paper and attends to his daughters in the second stanza.

Joan Merriam enacts a transition by resetting Neruda’s “Ode to Enchanted Light” in an office setting. The world become “a cup overflowing / with coffee” rather than “a glass overflowing /
with water”. Liquid is transformed and wealth redefined as that which speeds up life rather than that which is necessary to life.

David Graham, in “Statewide Razing”, narrates how a wrecking company name may inspire visions of the transitional act of a building’s destruction spread throughout a far broader locale. A phrase perhaps representative of the ambition of a company’s owner becomes a sign for decomposition with machinery equated to “burying beetles and carrion crows”. “The Honey of the Earth” takes snow as that most liminal of spaces, the blank page and offers that up, not as the intimidating specter so many writers fear, but as a valentine.

Finally, Clay Stockton’s essay follows the turns and transitions of Michael Donaghy’s “Upon a Claude Glass”.