avant-garde

[REVIEW] Antoecians by J. Gordon Faylor

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(Smiling Mind Documents, 2020)

REVIEW BY CLARA B. JONES

—

They were parents, but when?

And were they considered sourced

or let go on account of victory

sounds like a damp accompaniment

regardless of how great it felt

as one who had never experienced

at least there’s no screaming alone

over stints; it’s a thank-you

you rummaged

in an ice bucket for and found water.

J. Gordon Faylor (2020, p 56)

J. Gordon Faylor, Editor-Publisher of the online platform, GaussPDF, is the author of several books, as well as, a few collections in association with his colleague, Brandon Brown. Of particular note is Faylor’s 2016 novel/long poem, Registration Caspar (Ugly Duckling Presse), a collector’s item and a brilliant example of innovative writing that is, at once, a “transrational” experience and a psychological journey for the main character and the reader, alike. In my review of this book I asserted that, “The interpretation of Registration Caspar that I advance…represents my subjective experience as a reader of the novel. I do not claim to understand Faylor’s serious or playful intentions; however, I am of the opinion that the book is both serious and playful as a work of art.” I would make a similar claim about Antoecians, Faylor’s new volume of experimental poetry. Asked to reflect on his collection, the writer stated [via email], “I suppose I’d just note that it’s very much a work made in a state of quarantine, and which comes out of protracted solitude and frustration in and with that solitude, but which I also see—however abstractly—as the kind of concluding book in a trilogy that also includes People Skulk and Want [both available from Lulu.com]. Hesitant to speculate more on how they’re connected beyond sheer chronological proximity….” Herein, I will provide obligatory commentary on what I mean by “experimental” poetry, as well as, discuss  Antoecians as an exemplar of Postmodern innovative, avant garde writing that expands our understanding of what associative, “collage,” and political poetry entails.

The word, “antoecians” can be [over]simplified to mean entities existing in separate, though, not  unassociated, spatial domains, like the discontinuous yet distributed landscapes that the collection under review represents. In a 2012 essay, the Stanford poetry critic, Marjorie Perloff, a promoter of literary experimentation, advanced the idea that, “in recent years, we have witnessed a lively reaction” to the culture “of prizes, professorships, and political correctness” by a growing group of poets “rejecting the status quo.” In characteristic fashion, Perloff goes on to create a binary between poetry with and without traits that we generally attribute to the lyric, in particular, the personalized, “I,” as well as, music. One might argue that the poems in Antoecians lack the formalized musical elements that the mainstream reader expects [but, see below]. However, such an assessment—a standard—begs the questions: What do we mean by “music?” and Can we re-frame “music” in a manner that is consistent with poetry as an artistic enterprise rather than as an “ism” with invariant definitions and boundaries? As a student of experimental literature who regards Formalism highly, I am always curious about the seeming “tug-of-war” between  conventional poetics dominating our narratives about “good” poetry, on the one hand, and poetry that challenges, even, opposes, received wisdom about what a poetic masterpiece should be, on the other.

In her consideration of a lyrical : experimental divide, Perloff highlights questions fundamental to the ways that form, content, and meaning are understood as literary criteria. For example, the esteemed critic raises these questions: What makes a lineated text a poem? Does a poem require some sort of closure or circular structure characterized by a beginning, a middle, and an end? Should the poet speak via her/his/their own “person?” Should the poet divulge intimate, autobiographical details? I suggest that, like the poems in Antoecians, the avant garde poem can meet formalist standards [if that is a valuable pursuit at all] if we view words, phrases, sentences as units of wholes [whole poems, whole compositions, whole structures] capable of standing on their own not only as units subordinate to and secondary to the whole. Such a re-framing of what we mean by a poem raises elements, components of the whole to levels equivalent to the whole that exist on their own terms capable of standing alone or as parts—in combination with, even, greater than, the sum of the parts of the whole—a [literally, politically] radical transformation of a hierarchical into an egalitarian form or structure. Such a redistribution of the power of parts—of words, phrases, and their additional combinations [and re-combinations]—provides a bridge from the grand conceptual frameworks of Modernism [Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Capitalism, “Genius,” Utopianism, Idealism] to the “fractured,” fragmented, even, relative, realities and landscapes of Postmodernism, as exemplified by the poems in the volume under review.

Importantly, if we are to argue that Faylor’s compositions are not inconsistent with—if not, actually, continuous with—the poetry of Modernism and the rules of Formalism, and that Faylor’s text is anti-establishment, but not a rendering of anti-fascist or anarchic literature, it is necessary to demonstrate that Antoecians is a collection of rule-governed poems—a formal property that can be viewed as choices and as “intentional,” to employ Perloff’s term that she used to argue that Conceptual poetry is not “uncreative writing.” This perspective is not intended to suggest that Faylor selected or wrote each word, phrase, etc. in a conscious, aware manner. However, it is to suggest that Faylor’s consciously or unconsciously positioned elements, components lend cohesion to the composition itself—a form of literary integrity. In experimental writing, repetition, classically represented by the writing of Gertrude Stein, is widely acknowledged to be the most recognizable “glue” or technique unifying an experimental, avant garde collection. Faylor’s repetitive method is apparent on every page, in every stanza, of his new volume—repeating words comprised of double-letters, resolving what might seem to be a paradox between whole and part or between unfragmented and fractured. Perloff might see this as a trait or flavor analogous to what she calls “circular structure,” characteristic of conventional writing [see paragraph 3 above]. However, though I am in constant search for evidence of formal characteristics in experimental writing, Faylor would probably discount or, even, dismiss, any significance such comparisons may seemingly embody.

Other intentional or “rule-governed” features of the compositions in Antoecians, permitting fracture to coexist with unity, are word play [Ludwig Wittgenstein], including, the creation of neologisms, methods employed—apparently, but, not necessarily, consciously—to generate novelty, expanding parts and wholes—virtually, creating new forms and meanings. Thus, “Windatry Dontcry. Your amyxial Slaty-Gray;” “Was the leg-dump Thermaltake;” “the dim boat Scramsilence;” “the planet ruined people I saw as empaths.” Off and on throughout the text, Faylor repeats sounds: “godwit;” “sunlit;” “unlit.” With these and other techniques, Faylor combines and recombines form, content, and meaning—creating independent, as well as, interdependent, functional units. Other traits include the occasional incorporation of conventional elements, components—possibly self-referential material—[“As before, as foretold, I doze off at work. I make less money than I did before.”; “an already simple Oakland worry makes”]; beautiful images  [“imagination gone corpulent”]; emotion, including, loss and love [“couldn’t read that for years after you left”]; and, on p 14, lines can be found that approximate music—or, rhythm, for sure.

Other features of the poems in Antoecians expose the hand of a professional, rather than, an amateur writer—a serious, highly-evolved poet with a mature, “intentional” poetics. In particular, not only, repetition, but, also, one- and two-syllable words, as well as, hard consonants are employed to full artistic effect, resolving—or negating—another seeming paradox between balance and skew—again, whole : part or unfragmented : fractured. I find Faylor’s deference to the political to be, particularly, noteworthy—the establishment of an understated, non-intrusive, respectful  relationship with his readers by placing “interpretive power” [as per Formalist, Helen Vendler] in the reader’s person—a solidly Postmodern methodology. To the extent that Antoecians can be said to embody [fractured] content, as well as [fractured] form, meaning, also, is a function of the beholder’s body and mind via sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, images, associations, and abstractions stimulated through interactions with words on the page—not necessarily contiguous elements, components on contiguous pages. Finally, though I recommend Faylor’s new book, especially, to those who are experts, students, or consumers of—or who are curious about—experimental writing, broadly defined, this collection will appeal to any reader who values literary invention and an opportunity to engage with art of a high, though not rarefied or pretentious, order. In addition to Faylor’s other works, Antoecians deserves a wide audience.

—

Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA.

I get dirty, you get clean: on Teresa Pepi’s L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o

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WORDS BY ANDY MARTRICH

“Le temps et le monde et la personne ne rencontrent qu’une seule fois.”

– Hélène Cixous, Dedans

 

In the 1996 novel Pussy, King of the Pirates, which is a rendering of Treasure Island, Kathy Acker documents the exploits of a timeless Antigone as a surrogate of Stevenson’s protagonist Jim Hawkins. Through a mesh of narrative voices, Acker disputes the validity of time as a categorical imperative, suggesting that its necessity in the adventure of “buccaneers and buried gold” is coupled with its role in sustaining a patriarchal dogma that inflicts trauma indefinitely:

 

Out into the future, what will be time. In this arena between timelessness and time, the most dangerous thing or being that can come into being is time. (68)

 

The present, as the embodiment of a certain perniciousness, contains traces of its assemblage alongside the implication of its intactness. Although this appears intrinsic to its archival disposition (i.e., as a palimpsestic record), this symbiosis likewise connotes its fragility, since that which appears dynamic (as the result of things having happened) only does so by both succumbing to and imposing limitations that are otherwise transitory. Acker presents this idea in a narrative continuum, where things documented aren’t necessarily taking place within a chronology. Compliance to time refracts as the indulgent rationality and morality of a particular (male) sympathy. As an impetus filtered through privilege, it adheres to deep-seated preoccupations with rules that have the semblance of coming from nowhere, yet are blindly reiterated by cryptic authority.

Teresa Pepi’s L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o (Gauss PDF, 2015) confronts time as a similar snare, albeit with born-digital connotation. Contextually, Pepi makes use of Gauss PDF’s blog format (i.e., Tumblr) and publishing structure, which enables one to present files in lieu of normative art/poetry productions, allowing for the construction of new models and the supplementing of older ones. L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o is a zip file containing three Microsoft Word documents and forty-six jpegs. Most of the files are labeled by page number (although some pages are missing) and a succinct, generic title. The blog post itself contains a preface/personal note, which cites grim indicators. Even before opening the zip file, time is characterized in a reductive sense as the brutality of entropic order that portends an interior agony. It simultaneously coerces interiority while encompassing it, granting it an exploitative creative omnipotence. Yet, in lieu of its sinister, violent, and powerful character, time is susceptible to its own deterioration; it’s in disassociation from time (perhaps in its complete decay) where we might slip its terror.

The initial document in the zip file contains a poem titled “Drive.” There’s a loose employability, as it (along with the other two Word documents) is left to the possibility of editing, changing, and even redistribution. It also provides anatomical continuity to ideas expressed in the preface by reflecting the implied malleability of an “inbetween”—an undecidability that churns within an association of certain dualities (e.g., clean/dirty, health/disease, identity/anonymity, etc.). The poem is rant-like, while at the same time incurring a detached lucidity:

 

What do I look like, I don’t look like anything

 

the vehicle is the window, time is the window

 

drive to become clean, but you need to change

 

I am the window, I get dirty, you get clean

I enter the crowd

 

the bacteria entered the window pretending to be clean, the new space is diseased

 

locate the disease, find the source

 

trace the trail

 

but now yourself is diseased

 

you yourself must go through a window

to get clean

 

[…]

 

the window through the window to be clean, time through time to undo it

 

“Driving” expresses an active energy—a propulsion through time and space within a place of confinement (i.e., the fragile interior of a vehicle). In general, it connotes inadequate escape, as it can only reframe the complications at the core of locality; one inherently brings one’s own time and space into the time and space of others. There’s mutual exchange of contamination (the worst things have already infiltrated), yet Pepi must get through the window, identified as both the self and time, in order to avoid all corruption. Pepi must access the intermediacy of contrasting conditions.

“Driving” is followed by an unsettling jpeg titled “Multiple Revisions (1),” an image of text scrawled on a wall in a dark room. Here, Pepi refers to time as “an absence,” which suggests that withdrawal from it can’t be as linear as a process of driving:

In lieu, unhinging from time requires a kind of presence. The revision of Pepi’s “motives” rescinds the proclamation that one must propel into the “inbetween,” but rather dive beneath it. This idea is bolstered by three “Lint Paintings,” minimal portraits of a small gradient immersed in a vacant landscape. The lint paintings impress contemporaneous releasing/compressing—as if floating in a vacuum, or drifting into a kind of microcosmic, isolated realm. They appear to be topographical, delineating the locality of time as it occurs in hypothetical blankness as a speck of dust. Time (as lint) is small, gray, and spectral—yet connotes a portal out of scale, a puncture leading to material abyss. Eyes are drawn to it; one follows and resides in it.

Sure enough, we next encounter Pepi on the inside, or rather in the “Inbetween Space,” the first of three jpegs depicting a process of self-burial. “Inbetween Space 1” is an image of Pepi half-buried in the ground, reaching out to a nearby wall with dirt-caked fingers. Pepi appears trance-like, as if in communion or contact with something otherworldly. There is heavily contrasted golden light and deep shadow, with the latter descending through Pepi to the wall. Again, we come upon muddling dualities (e.g., light/dark, hidden/exposed, etc.), represented here by Pepi’s body. This is followed by “Inbetween Space 2,” an extreme close-up of the unoccupied hole, suggesting the reversal or disorienting of time, perhaps the effect of Pepi’s transfer, as self-burial takes place out of sequence (“Inbetween Space 3,” which shows a blurry figure (likely Pepi) digging the hole, is found at the end of the zip file).

With Pepi wedged in the gateway, L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o flickers in and out of time’s sadism, where technological authorities—including language—start deteriorating. Duration is in a process of annulment, affecting any kind of historic regulation. In a note to J. Gordon Faylor (publisher of Gauss PDF), Pepi comments:

There’s this thing in which one’s own personal life is allowed to make sense only through addressing the past without an image of it. You can’t have legal documents in other words. So I had to make them up.

One refracts former and prospective selves, experiences, relationships, and traumas into an imageless void. Indeed, Pepi constructs legal documents from this space—fabricated legalese composed of garbled text and symbols, perhaps reminiscent of spam, code, or found language. Legal documents are situated around the jpeg of the hole, connoting an extraterrestrial (non)communication via mystical expression or an arcane symbology (although rendered through a familiar filetype) from the “Inbetween Space” itself:

With the thread of authoritative evidence in peril, the delusion of the rule-based self-as-result is confounded by the breakdown of time. The legal documents are the last “texts” we see. There’s no longer a language, or any device for that matter, through which to recognize time’s jurisdiction. Pepi articulates its absence in a hiccuping continuum of digital photographs. Easily the most extensive part of L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o, thirty-nine of its forty-six jpegs are dedicated to a nearly identical shot—what Pepi refers to as “Overhead Light,” a ceiling fan and lamp framed from the same angle in varying light and shadow. The images are for the most part labeled in order (i.e., “Overhead Light 1,” “Overhead Light 2,” etc.), aside from a few missing numbers in the sequence. Yet like the “Inbetween Space” photos, they don’t seem to follow any particular duration beyond how they appear arranged in the zip file.

Many of the images include ghostly backscatter, implying spectral presences. One gets the sense of claustrophobic domesticity—that of being trapped or hiding in a room. The repetition and eeriness of a common household object suggests something conspiratorial at play, drawing parallels to Lynch/Frost’s use of the ceiling fan at the Palmer house in Twin Peaks, which is cryptic enough for fans of the show to speculate numberless roles, although most certainly embodying an essential function regarding the on-going violence, trauma, and ghoulishness of the series’ narrative. Pepi’s “Overhead Light,” on the other hand, appears to be more deliberate regarding its apparent inertia, although, once again, blurring the boundaries of chronology. But given the monotony of imagery and implicit paranoia (as to what is happening off camera), what are the effects of Pepi’s transfer to the “inbetween”—is Pepi liberated, captured, or none of the above? And where does that put the reader?

In L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o, time is a cliché that produces, compartmentalizes, and enacts cruelty within a solipsistic fantasy that ensnares us all. Amid the oscillation of extraneous conditions (e.g., as articulated in gradual disjunction out of time), Pepi appears rhizomatic (as per Deuleuze/Guattari’s conception of it)—planted within the intermediary, rooting and shooting into unknown perpetuity. There’s boundless interconnection in the presence of indefinite possibility beyond time’s snare. Perhaps, then, L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o suggests a peripatetic literature, contingent on activism against a foundational curse. On the other hand, the preface concludes that “this project is about nurturing,” asserting that Pepi found comfort, healing, and solace in the exploits of a self metamorphosed into a timeless Antigone. But with the terrible sadness of Pepi’s passing in 2015 at the age of twenty-one, L|in|P;L|in|D;L-o is not only more painful to revisit but also leads one to wonder if it isn’t an explicit gesture.

 

Self destruction is what it is

it’s a collective wish that

what is exists

—

Andy Martrich is the author of Ethical Probe on Mixed Martial Arts Enthusiasts in the USA (Counterpath Press), A manifest detection of death-lot in banking games (Gauss PDF Editions), and Iona (BlazeVOX Books), among others. Some essays have appeared at Jacket2, The Volta Blog, and ON Contemporary Practice. Andy works on Hiding Press with Mark Johnson and Jonathan Gorman, and lives in France.

Kervinen’s Cyber Poetics

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(ma press, 2018)

REVIEW AND INTERVIEW BY CLARA B. JONES

—

“What does poetry look like in the technological age.” Kenneth Goldsmith

 

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, an internationally recognized artist, is a Finnish composer, producer, writer, visual artist, publisher [ma press], and editor of the new journal, coelacanth—a venue for experimental poetry. His work focuses, mainly, on algorithmic processes, computer-assisted compositions, and various other methods based on cybernetics, chaotic dynamics, and stochastic systems, among others. For purposes of the present review, I am advancing Kervinen as a “cyber poet,” and his book, as little as a single point, can be read as a collection of randomly-generated prose poems or as a long-form poem. The following piece is representative of the works in the volume:

 

Limpness inverted psychoses black-and-

blue affidavit Not only within the breakdown

point of an L-estimator is bounds undertone

decontaminate merrymaker bloodsucker defend and

apocalypse fight bottom tacky manifestly infuse

refusal scenario aardvark sponge as a single

point dairy the image that tress thick resilient

nuclear energy difficult computationally. In

many circumstances L-estimators are adjacent

cymbal congestion temp unequivocally broadcaster

as in the median (of an

 

I asked two of my friends to read and comment on this piece. Walter, a senior citizen and serious student of classical, English-language poetry, responded that he did not understand the poem and that it might as well have been written in Finnish. Meghan, a young mother and a published poet who writes beautiful lyrics, including iambic pentameter and soft rhyming, said that the poem was not her style but that she would like to learn more about experimental literature. In a sense, these readers are correct to imply that, from a Formalist perspective, a lot is missing from these compositions, though many of the texts include elements of strong image and emotion [“repeater,” “orgasm,” “breakdown”]. For the most part, however, the compositions, in whole and in part, are “defamiliarized” and “strange,” as Viktor Shklovsky noted when speaking of poetry using common language in such a manner as to alter the reader’s sensation or perception—features relating as little as a single point to Futurism and Dadism.

Surely, the poems in as little as a single point are examples of avant garde writing, often characterized by repetition and redundancy [“L-estimator,” “breakdown” or “break-down,” “minimum or maximum”], intermittent punctuation and capitalization, as well as, non-sequiturs throughout such that words or phrases may not follow logically from one another [“collage” poetry]. Some of the phrases begin as if they might become complete sentences—then veer off into something completely unrelated [“The breakdown point of an L-estimator is given by antonym are basis of why upper and sarsaparilla accommodations transformation…”] Additionally, some cryptic meanings might have been built into the randomly-generated texts. The book’s title, for example, may refer to a “single-point rubric” [Education] or a “single point of failure” [Systems Engineering].

Further, like many innovative works [e.g., Joyce’s Ulysses], these compositions may be viewed as “language-games” [Wittgenstein], and this algorithmic prose poetry is a type of “performance art”—playful, probing multi-sensory experience, creating, for some readers, a type of [signal] noise. Also, consistent with many experimental poems, these pieces are “indeterminate,” challenging the status of the author’s and reader’s egos and lacking a “thetic” component of narrative or closure. Indeed, each word or phrase can stand alone, permitting the reader to combine and recombine them into novel [meta-novel] texts. I would urge Walter and Meghan to consider John Cage’s comment: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually, one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

(Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, courtesy of the author)

In an attempt to gain a better understanding of Kervinen’s methods and purposes, I solicited answers to four of my questions via e-mail, as follows:

Clara Jones: How would you classify this book of poems? i.e., What kind of poetry is it?

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen: For me this is a series of prose poems, all written algorithmically by my own program[s]. More usually, I call my ‘poetry’ as ‘writings’, it somehow describes [what I do] better, especially computer-generated texts, but lately I have started more and more to manually change things I am not satisfied [with], which [in] some cases means I rewrite [the] whole thing. That means the direction is from computer-generated to computer-assisted. [A] few years ago I had strict rules to NOT alter/change anything generated by my programs. [I]t was just one binary choice: [generated] either by computer or manually. Getting older seems to mean getting a bit softer, too.

CJ: Can you envision ever working with an “intelligent machine” [robot] with haptic [human interface]  capabilities to create poetry?

JK: I have done computer-generated music, texts and images [since the] early 1980’s, and so far, I haven’t seen anything even remotely intelligent [in] any machines. [W]e are still far away [from] “thinking” computers. [T]here’s always [a] human behind [the machine], programming, collecting data, organizing information etc, and of course, someone need[s] to switch the computer on. For me, [the] computer is an extended pen, another point of view, [a] different approach, where I “convert” my ideas to the format the computer is able to handle and then write the program to generate stuff, according [to]  the idea I have already formed in my mind. So, basically, I write programs to emulate myself.

CJ: As a poet, what is the worst or best advice you have ever received?

JK: I have no formal education in writing or literature, I studied musicology, composing and computing in university. So, this is [an] interesting question. [P]erhaps because of [the] nature of my writings, I have never gotten any advices. Not a single one.

CJ: What poetry projects are you currently working on?

JK: I am mostly working with music currently, but I write 1-3 books per year, run two presses, Gradient Books and ma press, and I am editing [the] first issue of [a] new e-zine, coelacanth; these are ongoing projects. I work very impulsively, I have no idea what I am going to do tomorrow, or next three hours. I am [currently] working with some art-related, mostly music, processes [most of] the time. [My] children have all moved to [their] own houses; I am living with my wife and our four cats, and I work constantly, except when sleeping, time [that] is dedicated to [my] extremely stupid dreams, which can’t be related to anything in real life. And not only stupid, they are usually also unbelievable boring. I also eat, but that I have always considered as a waste of time.

Clearly, Kervinen has given much thought to his multi-faceted career as an experimental artist. Whether or not he considers himself an overtly “political poet,” his methods are oppositional—refusing to conform to mainstream standards established by Formalists such as Cleanth Brooks or Helen Vendler. At the same time, although we might classify him with the Post-modernists [fracture/fractured language and motivation], he shares with Modernists, such as Eliot, James, and Stevens, the acts of expanding our understanding of poetry’s forms and content. One is reminded of Kenneth Goldsmith’s observation: “An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.” Surely this perspective suggests that experimental compositions, such as those in as little as a single point, share features in common with what most critics and readers think of as traditional poetry (e.g., originality, “interpretive power”). Indeed, it might be suggested that Kervinen’s poems are not anti-authoritarian as ends in themselves but, rather, innovative and exploratory commentaries on contemporary psycho-social ways of being and “events in the world”—both existential and veridical. This is an important book that is highly recommended to consumers of the avant garde, as well as, to any reader curious about the current and future direction of cyber literature.

—

Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other works, she is author of the poetry collection, /feminine nature/ (GaussPDF, 2017). Clara, also, conducts research on experimental literature, radical publishing, as well as, art and technology.

[REVIEW] water by Reuben Woolley and Jan Stead

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(Self-published and hand-bound [limited edition, /10, 17cm x 21cm])

REVIEW BY CLARA B. JONES

—

“The chap book with Reuben is finally finished…[t]he stitching was the hardest part—getting the holes lined up and not tangling the linen thread. I have had angst over this bit since the project started but I am relieved to find it all worked….” Jan Stead blog, smallwindowstudio

“There was earth inside them, and they dug.” Paul Celan

I regularly peruse Entropy Magazine‘s feature, Where To Submit, and have noticed that a few journals are dedicated exclusively to collaborative writing; and, in the domain of experimental literature, hybrid work—often between writers and visual artists—is not uncommon. Collaboration is difficult, even between the best of friends. There are always issues of coordination and control, not to mention the inevitable conflicts of egos. I collaborated with a colleague once—on a major writing project, and it was the worst experience of my 40-year professional life. Notwithstanding others’ experiences, Reuben Woolley and Jan Stead have produced a joint effort that has yielded outstanding results. water, the pamphlet under review, is a visually stunning creative work showcasing the noteworthy talents of two artists—one a poet, one a printmaker and painter.

Jan Stead answered questions from me via Facebook. I, especially, wanted to know more about her life and work, her inspirations, and her role, as well as her process creating water. What follows is extracted from her responses. She is located in the UK, residing in North Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire where she has a “small window studio.” Often working outside, Nature and, in general, the world around her, are her primary influences. She “admires” David Hockney and, also, draws inspiration from words. “Reuben’s work has recently been very important to me….” A former teacher, Stead now works full-time as an artist.

Regarding the chapbook with Reuben, Stead received five poems from him with a water theme or thread, afterward, preparing the illustrations. In her words: “I made five drypoint plates on metal and decided on a colour palette so there was a coherence [see photo accompanying this review]. I used ultramarine, permanent yellow, permanent red, raw sienna hue and sepia on a textured paper. I followed a ‘traditional order’, the front cover is a Bastard Title i.e. no author name just the title, followed by an introduction as to the composition of the book. This page was signed by us both so I signed first, then it went to Spain for Reuben to sign and then back here. The poem and its illustration were stitched together first in a way that makes them lay flat when the book opens so you can see text and image together.” Further: “ The ‘illustrations’ for the poems are drypoint etchings each are an edition of 10 that is shown as /10. They are made by incising the lines into a metal plate with a variety of sharp hand tools. I retyped Reuben’s poems in an old typewriter font following his layout.” Additional details, including, technical ones, can be found on Stead’s blog and on her Facebook feed.

Reuben Woolley is an internationally recognized poet from the UK who resides in Spain. He has been featured in jacket2 and other venues, he has been interviewed by editors, publishers, academics, and other poets, and his books, chapbooks, and poems have been received enthusiastically by his readers, peers, and publishers, particularly, those who appreciate “exploratory” or political poetry. In addition to writing, Woolley publishes and edits two poetry journals, The Curly Mind, an online venue for innovative work, and, I am not a silent poet, an online journal reserved for poetry with political relevance, especially, topics concerning abuse. Reuben’s “referential” [Marjorie Perloff] poems have an instantly-recognizable style—elements of collage; juxtapositions of words, phrases, and other grammatical units—[apparently] meaningful or not; repetition [from water, the word, “tick”]; soft and hard rhyming [from water, “speak” – “speak,” “light” – “night,”, “ways” –  “waves”]; copious white spaces; innovation and play with grammar and punctuation [especially, use of periods, double-spaces, and back-slashes as partial or full stops—sometimes, along with white spaces, slowing the pace of reading]; lack of capitalization;, as well as, relative consistency of form.

All of these features not only demonstrate that Woolley has “found his niche,” but, also, that his poems have a recognizable and intentional “voice” and persona. In addition, the consistent and repetitive features of his poems unify his work within each poem, within books, and across collections, highlighting a perspective expressed in a 2018 interview: “Miles Davis, John Coltrane, who led me into Free Jazz. [sic] I’m trying to get a Free Poetry of a similar Nature. This does not mean anarchy; no good verse is free. The good poet…controls every element at his or her disposal….” Woolley’s work is in no manner “derivative;” however, he has credited numerous musicians and writers as inspirations—among these are, Paul Celan, Jerome Rothenberg, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Samuel Beckett, Denise Levertov, Bob Dylan, Charles Bernstein, Alice Notley, Helen Ivory, and Fran Lock.

water is heavily influenced by literary conventions, apparently, characteristic of all of his poems, since echoes of his last book resonate throughout the brief, new, 5-poem, 5-print, collection. In January 2019, I reviewed that expertly-written and handsomely-produced volume, some time we are heroes, in the online journal, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, observing that: “The repetition of wet things—liquid things—is ubiquitous throughout the text  [ e.g., ‘water,’ ‘blood,’ ‘rain,’ ‘beer,’ ‘breast milk,’ ‘ocean,’ ‘liquor,’ ‘tears’],”, and one notices that the last word of water‘s final poem [“north  water  &  waves”] is “heroes” [“my whispering heroes”], lending water a type of closure or regularity over time. In addition, many words in the new book refer, directly or indirectly, to water, among them, “rain,” “ocean,” “fish,” “sea,” “waves,” and “boats.”

In literature, “water” symbolizes life, cleansing, and rebirth. Reuben’s poems, read, in water, from first to last, can be interpreted as a person’s quest for wholeness over the course of his/her life—over time [from water, “you hear tick tock the old / like fish / remember six seconds repeat / staring a cold night /   tick      / tock              ;”  “a same you say / a doppler / shift  ticktocticktock / we band the waves  a truly / sea”]. Though, throughout water, there seems to be no necessary correspondence between poem [left-hand page] and color print [right-hand page], each of Stead’s fluid, misty images contains a circle, and three [of five] prints contain either, what appear to be, branches or a trunk of trees. The circle symbolizes Mother Earth or sacred space and is reminiscent of the Hindu/Buddhist/Jainist, Mandala, in which a circle appears within a square with a center point—the “boundaries” inherent to circle-symbolism. Related to these associations between poems and prints, trees symbolize, like water, union or physical and spiritual nourishment. Of course, water can be soothing and nourishing, as well as, dangerous, highlighting the present pamphlet’s complex and rich themes of life, death, and time [and memory?] that are replete with what the poetry critic, Helen Vendler, has called, “interpretive power” [see, especially, the poems, “private battlefields / personal interpretations” and “not  crossing  i  say”].

I would be remiss not to mention water as an example of the monetization of poetry—a short work of art sold for 100 pounds sterling. While this initiative is not a novel one, it is not practiced on a wide scale, and it may be time for poets to discuss methods for making their work financially sustainable. By way of e-mail, I asked Woolley about plans for a marketing strategy for the expensive, new collection. He responded that, probably, the pamphlet will be sold at Stead’s art exhibitions and in galleries. The poet noted, with surprise, that one of his Facebook followers has expressed an interest in purchasing a copy of water and that, at a later date, the artists “might bring out copies at a lower price…after the ten are sold.” Another idea floated by the poet, based on Bob Dylan’s lithograph prints, “The Drawn Blank Series,” would be to produce a “series of the artwork and poem combined.” In 2018, I wrote a proposal* suggesting that poets market their work, in association with a visual artist, according to the same criteria employed by visual and other artists [e.g., “performance artists”] who contract with galleries. The intent would be, in part, to enhance poets’ income from their art, to broaden the influence and impact of poetry, as well as, to increase the range of artforms represented by a given gallery.

Clearly, no poet would be obligated to participate in such a marketing strategy. However, if the tactics were even marginally successful, advantages (e.g., stream of income, incentive for poetry journals to pay poets, increased status of Poetry among the Arts and in public) should obtain to poets and galleries alike. The Woolley-Stead model and related concepts might be discussed at literary retreats, conferences, M.F.A. departments, etc. Whatever devolves from initiatives like water, the pamphlet represents a psychological and spiritual whole that many of us hope to achieve across our lifetimes. Though not a religious text in any manner, Woolley and Stead have created a chapbook for the spirit, in addition to, a work of intellect, sensation, and emotion—Art, in the most fundamental sense, worthy of being part of a rare book collection. water will be well-received by all readers of hybrid texts and avant-garde projects.

 

*available via e-mail request: foucault03@gmail.com

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Clara B. Jones is a Knowledge Worker practicing in Silver Spring, MD, USA. Among other works, she is author of the collection, Poems for Rachel Dolezal (GaussPDF, 2019).