A new, cosmic, subjective, poetic pregnancy in Laura Muensterer's Moonchild

Dr. Mohammed Sameer Abd Elsalam

Laura Muensterer is a unique modern poet, that she presents a creative poetic discourse includes the hyper presence of ego, the romantic, symbolic relationship between subject and cosmos or nature. She also interprets the inner world of the speaker according to the hidden, cultural powers and contexts behind the textual signs and gaps.

In this reading of her poems, I tried to represent the images and creative states of ego according to the discursive, textual networks, and I used the Greimas's semiotic square to discover the probabilities of structural links behind the signs and significations. Also I published the basic copy of my study on Reedsy Discovery at: https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/moonchild-laura-muensterer/user-reviews/moonchild-mohammed-sameer-abd-elsalam

In her collection of poems "Moonchild", Laura Muensterer searched for the creative, subjective energy of regeneration, that the speaker interpreted herself through the powers of individuality, division, trespassing and connecting with cosmic signs. All of those powers interacted and conflicted behind ego's discourse, that she transposed herself in many textual identities, such as the creative identity in the sign of pure fire or sun shining, the individual identity in resolving her inner world by mental games and the cosmic identity in the state of rebirth which seems as a strong presence of moon, sun and becoming of life.

She also confirmed the powers of absence and daydreams which were happened by the magical impact of music on consciousness and unconsciousness.

Laura created her poetic discourse through imaginary homogeneity, dialogue and multiplicity, that ego entered a new, super, spiritual state after she had gone beyond the borders of traditional life.

Additionally, ego made a creative dialogue with the reader when she wrote dense, interpretative words after the textual gaps, therefore, she returned to Haiku, but in other context, that she focused on the internal, creative development in many cross fields like, emptiness, inner conflict, creation and rebirth, so, she didn't connect to natural signs basically.

She also supported the multiplicity of discourse powers, that she implied to many relative, inner and paradoxical states, such as isolation, creativity, negative reception, purity and the continuous formation of poetic identity.

We can also notice the Aesthetics of harmony in Laura's discourse, that she used some cosmic, subjective and natural signs Frequently, like sky, moon, flowers, trees, light, earth, the pure hyper voice, and the divided voice too. But she supported the hyper creative existence which was similar to a pure candle fire.

Moreover, if we want to analyze Laura's poem "Like a candle"(1), we will find some anaphoric signs, sentences and pronouns which interprets the discourse harmony and textual gaps, that ego implied to the positive light of burning and also to the negative burning in the signifier of candle and its hidden transferences, so the anaphoric sign was the simulacrum of candle and its deep signification. On the other hand, the anaphoric pronoun was the first person and her paradoxical creative states in the margin of the basic presence. Also the key sentence was the simulator sentence when ego interpreted herself as a candle. Furthermore, Laura left a textual gap, then she added a metaphorical, integrant words which referred to both the hyper feminine presence and the relative, negative moment.

Although some various conflicted states or inner dreamy sounds in some of Laura's poems, she celebrated the creative power of life and its transformation or its becoming. Also, she supported the archetype of eternal life in the connection between ego and cosmic spiritual sign.

In his book "Creative Evolution", Henri Bergson asserted the continuous movements of living, and also he thought that euglena symbolizes the primordial tendency of life(2). Therefore, Bergson created a new continuous vision of natural life and its symbolic, metaphoric signs, so, we can read the cosmic, natural, aesthetic signs of Laura's poems according to this creative energy of life with the hidden, spiritual, eternal presence.

Ego searched for this hidden energy in her transformative states, her daydreams and in the purity inner cosmic, renewed presence.

On the other hand, we can read the semiotic, semantic structure of Laura's poems according to the critical method of Algirdas Greimas and Jacques Fontanille, and their semantic, semiotic square, so, we can create two squares of semiotic relationships; the first one includes the rich images of ego, and the other includes the probabilities of individual and inner sounds and states.

The first structural discordance is between the image of subject and the cosmic image. Additionally, in the bottom of the semiotic square, we will see another relationship between not cosmic signs, like the particular, personal isolation, personal emptiness or the particular mental games, and not subjective signs, like the hyper absence in music or the hyper presence in the light of sun or the light of candle.

The second structural discordance is between the conflict of inner states or sounds and the pure image of ego. Furthermore, we noticed, in the bottom of the semiotic square, a new, semantic, semiotic relationship between not pure ego or the hyper presence of paradoxical states, like the hidden sounds of joy, love, sin and repression, and not conflicted sounds in the hyper, pure ego like the sign of the breadth of ego beyond its borders in the space of room or in cosmic hidden field.

Finally, I believe that Laura added a new poetic, cosmic, aesthetic relationships between ego and the rich world(3).