'These are contradictory times and Charles Dickens' haunting words at the opening of A Tale of Two Cities hold prophetically true as a gloss of the contents of four W twenty-nine-. 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age. foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...' One of the roles of poetry and fiction is to explore and articulate contradiction and contrariety in all its imagined layers, finials, matrices and interstice,. It's what gives art part of its power, 'authenticity', seductive appeal — to take readers inside new ways of seeing the familiar world: 'language made strange' is still a useful definition of poetry (and prose).' (Editorial introduction)
