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Anne Tardos

Anne Tardos on Cascadian Prophets

March 12, 2025
Zach Charles

I am grateful today to bring you an interview with Anne Tardos on Cascadian Prophets, reading from and speaking about her newest book: The Always Already Absent Present. 

The number 7, according to one numerologist, is both deep and wise, not satisfied with simple explanations and surface level information. It knows the real gold is buried deeper and won’t stop until it finds it, and then it will keep digging for more. Asking questions, researching, listening, and sensing are all special skills the 7 uses in its search for awareness. Though spirituality is especially important to the number 7 in numerology, it takes a more intellectual approach to life than an emotional one. It’s an analytical number that enjoys gathering and filtering through information to find answers, yet it has a powerful intuition, which it uses as a guide. This combination of conscious and subconscious thinking allows the mind of numerology number 7 to shine a light into the very deepest realms to access hidden truths.

Or as Anne Tardos would say, “It reflects an earnest desire to master language and freedom.” It does that in large part with the human brain, which Anne says is, “soft, warm, and noisy.” A book of 77 seven line poems, all of which but one have seven words in them, is the latest offering from Anne Tardos, a USAmerican poet, author of 13 books of poetry, many of which have been translated and published in journals and anthologies around the world. The new book is The Always Already Absent Present and Anne is our guest.

Check out more of what the Lab does at https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or at https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/cascadian-prophets-podcast-2/.

1 Comment

  1. Diana Elser

    Interesting interview – Anne Tardo seems to be clear, and content – as artist – to write what she wants to write, what she discovers in the moment, what she researches – bringing all her experience(s) to bear on what emerges for her. I appreciate that she seems to be disinterested in justifying or describing her work in the academic “school of criticism” sense.

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