The Forgotten Shore

The Forgotten Shore is a book of poetry by J. P. Linstroth. It is an important work for the author, spanning many years, and representing a personal journey from the subjective to the mythological, to the symbolic, as well as observations of the natural world. The book is titled, The Forgotten Shore, for good reason. It is representative of a sort of mythical place, a place where love is lost, on the one hand, and may not be re-encountered. Maybe it is a desolate island--a shoreline, a beach, somewhere to be left after a relationship, discarded like drift wood. And yet, on the other hand, there is inherent in this conceptualization a sense of hope. This latter perspective may not be altogether obvious to the reader. While love is lost, and one may find oneself lonely on a so-called "forgotten shore," and perhaps abandoned, there is, nevertheless, hope of leaving such a place and finding love elsewhere. At least, this seems to be the implication. Sometimes love leaves us on "forgotten shores". The immediate afterthoughts are we may never find such love again. No future love could possibly match what we have lost and so on. But this is untrue. Love may be found again. We somehow find so-called other soulmates and intimate connections. Hence, above all, the book is meant to be an "an archaeology of emotions". There is a need to dig and dig deeper and dive into the depths of emotions presented on the page. Maybe the language and style at times are archaic, or the vocabulary difficult to understand, or the meanings encountered nebulous and obscure. Still, this allows for a broader interpretation, leaving meanings and interpretations in the abstract, whereby the observer, reader, finds their own meanings concealed and contained within the epistemological and ontological direction of the author.