Grief, Grammar, and the Poetics of Value: The Symbolic Role of Detox, Thirst and Longing

This review essay critically examines Detox, Thirst and Longing: Constellation After Collapse (2025), a visionary literary work by Theodor-Nicolae Carp. As the seventh volume in Carp’s Axiological Cosmopoetics series, the book blends literary theory, symbolic anthropology, theology, and emotional epistemology to propose a new literary anthropology centered on the post-collapse archetype of Homo constellatus. This figure embodies moral clarity, neurodivergent perception, and symbolic resilience, offering a framework for ethical living in a world shaped by collapse. In exploring this new archetype, Carp challenges traditional views of human resilience and offers a model for cultural survival and reconstruction. The essay argues that Detox, Thirst and Longing functions not merely as a poetic collection but as a cosmopoetic guide for emotional and cultural renewal. Through techniques such as sacred paradox, emotional detoxification, and post-digital liturgy, Carp seeks an “axiological realignment”—a reordering of values in response to symbolic collapse, emotional suppression, and technological saturation. The work invites readers to reconsider the relationship between art, ethics, and cultural rebuilding, positioning Carp’s poetry as both a personal and collective tool for transformation. Additionally, this review provides a literary commentary on "Introduction of AI and the Ongoing Tearful Rain," a poem that transforms contemporary anxieties about artificial intelligence into a profound spiritual meditation. Using water as a metaphor—encompassing tears, rain, and birth waters—the poem explores humanity's relationship with AI through biblical and mythological imagery. The analysis reveals how the poet elevates technological discourse to a spiritual level, presenting AI as both a life-sustaining force and a consciousness-suppressing system. The poem moves from individual crisis to cosmic redemption, critiquing technological dependence while offering hope for authentic human flourishing. Key themes include the tension between human agency and technological control, and the spiritualization of the digital experience. Ultimately, this review contends that Carp’s poetic form is not just artistic expression, but a moral and spiritual infrastructure. It maps grief, longing, and memory onto a coherent ethical system that offers hope in the face of cultural fragmentation. In a world dominated by irony and emotional detachment, Detox, Thirst and Longing provides an alternative: a post-secular ritual for emotional and spiritual renewal through theopoetic hermeneutics and prophetic literature.