Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but both times that I've agreed to participate in Readwritepoem's Virtual Book Tour, the book for the month has been a chapbook that is essentially one long poem. Is the longer poem becoming more popular?
This month it is Molly Gaudry's Anatomy for the Artist, which you can read free online at Blossombones. Each small section/stanza begins with the phrase "we take me apart", and the poem tours the body discussing all the ways in which it is taken apart:
We take me apart--
by form and function of muscles
...by bones of the upper limb...
etc
There is a narrative hidden in the work, although it doesn't appear immediately - but the tension builds, and by the end the narrative has become clearer, with the narrator taken apart both anatomically and emotionally.
It's writing that takes me out of my comfort zone, and I didn't think I would like it at first, but it certainly grew on me by the end and I felt the force of the underlying story. And I am a sucker for scientific vocabulary - there was plenty to satisfy me there, such as cruciate ligament of knee and many others.
A few niggles, though. In particular, there are one or two places where the anatomical terms seem wrongly placed. Going back to find them, there are not many. But they certainly stuck out on first reading, making me ask "what's that doing there?" eg the symphysis pubis appears in a section beginning "we take me apart by muscles of the upper limb".
The second point is not so much a niggle as a curiosity to hear how one would read the work out loud. It makes heavy use of italics, and I always wonder how one would read a work like this and have it retain its sense. I wonder if two voices would work? There are sections that I read over about three times - once straight though, once reading the italicised bits only, and once reading the unitalicised portions only, and I felt that deepened the reading considerably.
I'm not much of a fan of reading online. I'm happy to read short poems on the screen. For something this length, I prefer to print it out so I can read it in comfort in a squishy armchair. The reader on the website did allow me to print it, but not very easily. I had to click through page by page, but couldn't jump pages and it would be the same for reading - if you get to page ten and want to check back to page 1, you can't just select page 1 but have to go back one page at a time, or use your browser history to jump back. Jumping forward would be even harder. And you can't just print the whole poem at one click - you have to print separately each time you turn to a new page.
That annoyance over, I enjoyed reading my printed out version - and the anatomical drawings on the cover and on the footer of each page are a delight.
Showing posts with label virtual book tour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label virtual book tour. Show all posts
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Virtual Book Tour: At Night the Dead
Welcome to the sixth stop on Readwritepoem's Virtual Book Tour.
I have to say that I found Lisa Ciccarello's chapbook At Night, the Dead challenging to review. My poetry tastes tend towards what is often described as "accessible" although not too accessible. I found the sections of this book a little more mysterious and confusing than my usual poetic reading matter. If another member of my poetry group had brought them along, I would certainly be asking many questions - what do you mean here? I don't understand this. Why did you use this word?
The work is unusual in that it appears to be intended as a whole, since each section - apparently from the layout, a prose poem - has the same title. This is not the action of a poet who might publish any of them separately. The first starts with an air of menace -
You lock the door. You lock the window. You dream of the dead.
Initially, the sense of the dead being a threat that is somehow not quite defined is what I took from the book. Then I read Jill's review in which she says the dead love us. I went back to re-read and found that there too.
The dead need someone to smile at
Their love is just a little series of letters
The sections are full of very striking images. The moon is a plug to stopper the dark, it is a coin on the eye of the dead, it is an ember. The sky smells like tea.
There is a good deal of repetition. The dead, the moon, salt, coins, the dark. I feel the poems walk a fine line between being darkly obsessive and merely repetitive and boring. Sometimes they wobble a little, but never quite fall off the tightrope. In fact, on each re-reading, I notice details that I missed the first time, and they grow richer. In "accessible" poems, this happens less, because they offer a clear picture which we understand on first reading, and put all the pieces in place. With these poems which I find harder to understand, the mind at first rejects the details that don't fit the initial picture. Words change their meaning - salt appears to be symbolic, but what is it symbolic of? Does salting the sills keep the dead away, or does it feed the dead?
You salt the sills from the inside...
The dead...have no salt. Each one takes a grain of salt
The music of the poems also interested me. The sound does not always appear to flow smoothly. It is sometimes chopped up into many short sentences
A heart is just soil. Ask anyone. A heart is blinks. A long blink is a scream. A longer blink is sleep. All night a scream. There must be someone else
At other times there are long sentences with many clauses in which it is difficult to find a place to take a breath.
Regardless, when certain fish then jumped their eyes were coins made luminous by the luminous coin of the moon which was part of the earth almost recently enough to still remember the heat.
It is not that it is unmusical, but that to me it resembles modern music (modern "classical" music, that is, not "pop") - sometimes fragmented, sometimes discordant, not always easily singable but more exciting and compelling for its surprises.
I have to say that I found Lisa Ciccarello's chapbook At Night, the Dead challenging to review. My poetry tastes tend towards what is often described as "accessible" although not too accessible. I found the sections of this book a little more mysterious and confusing than my usual poetic reading matter. If another member of my poetry group had brought them along, I would certainly be asking many questions - what do you mean here? I don't understand this. Why did you use this word?
The work is unusual in that it appears to be intended as a whole, since each section - apparently from the layout, a prose poem - has the same title. This is not the action of a poet who might publish any of them separately. The first starts with an air of menace -
You lock the door. You lock the window. You dream of the dead.
Initially, the sense of the dead being a threat that is somehow not quite defined is what I took from the book. Then I read Jill's review in which she says the dead love us. I went back to re-read and found that there too.
The dead need someone to smile at
Their love is just a little series of letters
The sections are full of very striking images. The moon is a plug to stopper the dark, it is a coin on the eye of the dead, it is an ember. The sky smells like tea.
There is a good deal of repetition. The dead, the moon, salt, coins, the dark. I feel the poems walk a fine line between being darkly obsessive and merely repetitive and boring. Sometimes they wobble a little, but never quite fall off the tightrope. In fact, on each re-reading, I notice details that I missed the first time, and they grow richer. In "accessible" poems, this happens less, because they offer a clear picture which we understand on first reading, and put all the pieces in place. With these poems which I find harder to understand, the mind at first rejects the details that don't fit the initial picture. Words change their meaning - salt appears to be symbolic, but what is it symbolic of? Does salting the sills keep the dead away, or does it feed the dead?
You salt the sills from the inside...
The dead...have no salt. Each one takes a grain of salt
The music of the poems also interested me. The sound does not always appear to flow smoothly. It is sometimes chopped up into many short sentences
A heart is just soil. Ask anyone. A heart is blinks. A long blink is a scream. A longer blink is sleep. All night a scream. There must be someone else
At other times there are long sentences with many clauses in which it is difficult to find a place to take a breath.
Regardless, when certain fish then jumped their eyes were coins made luminous by the luminous coin of the moon which was part of the earth almost recently enough to still remember the heat.
It is not that it is unmusical, but that to me it resembles modern music (modern "classical" music, that is, not "pop") - sometimes fragmented, sometimes discordant, not always easily singable but more exciting and compelling for its surprises.
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