The Opposite of Work Archives

136 pgs./$14.00

Working in clipped phrases throughout the whole of The Opposite of Work (Jack Leg Press, 2013), Hugh Behm-Steinberg has built a dream-rattled space. It is a space of stretched ideas and ideals set in the pursuit of reconfiguration and reimagining—or at worst, the sand-refined dream-filtration—of many of the pillars of western myth: Egyptian (“Horace”), Judeo-Christian (“Eden,” “Adam,” “Lot”), American political/economic (“A Senator,” “The Truck,” “In the New Economy”), and domestic (“Radish,” “Not Sleeping”).

His poems, situated on the right facing pages, are paired with pretty mysterious and intriguing images on the left-facing pages. The images, which operate as a flipbook, were created by Mary Behm-Steinberg, and contain all manner of things, from eggs in crowns to humans transforming into crows. It’s pretty wild stuff that seems in many instances to have jumped to life directly from the opposite page. The images work to directly extend and comment upon the content, creating a larger world for the poems. Instead of building towering and narrow poems – pieces that spire ever upward – or drill through the page, as it were, Behm-Steinberg has chosen to work horizontally in effect flattening the content in a mirror of the two dimensional imagery that accompanies each piece. As in “Again”

Tap your head twice          to let the rust out.
The thought as it          stumbles in you.
It has rhythm but you have to wait you have to wait
a while for it to repeat until you are asleep you have to wait
because you have to. Because your body is a small country and
small countries wait. Knowing how small is the wine we are all
sobered by. We drink          small sips… (p.71) Continue reading →