Poems about modern romance by a modern romantic Moving through a human landscape that exists both in the past and present, the speaker/speakers in This is the Emergency Present attempt to unearth an understanding about love, romanticism, and connection. Using chemistry and physics, the early works of Pablo Neruda, and the abstract broken language around him, Vincent Pagé attempts to define something tangible about presence and absence. By asking "at what point in a transition/ does one thing become the other thing?" he challenges us to consider what it means to be here, and at what point are we finally there?