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This book from the publisher The
Knives Forks and Spoons Press is a very good example of this publisher's
engagement with formally innovative poetry, sometimes to the extent that the
idea of the book can become a negotiation.
First of all, Options is an alphabet
book. Here, the illustrations are on one page and the lettering on the facing
page. The letters tell their story, and the illustrations tell theirs. They
compliment each other but are independent. Poet and artist have said any poem
could have gone with any illustration and vice versa. (The illustrations
don't contain the letters - more on the illustrations later.) It is the whole
alphabet but not in alphabetical order (though it begins with 'a' and ends
with 'z') and partly because of this has such a feeling of inclusiveness that
it could easily include many more letters besides. The opposite of Velimir
Khlebnikov's 'will reform all alphabets wiping out unwanted letters' from Lightland (translated by Paul Schmidt, 1997).
Options is also a bestiary, like
alphabet books for the main part are, but here the letters, having only
letters and not whole words, are anonymous and disembodied, but are not
amorphous. They take on human properties, or sometimes pass properties on to
those within the poems without taking on the properties themselves. Here is
letter 'V':
V is seemingly
virtual
almost in variant
ways
sometimes a voice
is so veiled:
inviting and vacating
in drifts
'V' goes on to reveal itself even more Cheshire Cat like, ending 'already /
vanishing over / itself // ready / to void its / flesh.' There is a seeming
naturalness of diction, and with their length, the longest poem has twenty
lines of about this length, which gives them the feeling of strokes by a
master calligrapher or even a puppet master. Like in the best of these
artists' work, there is a layering to them, and the feeling of control from
within the production itself. The switches in meaning don't appear too jerky
but are smoothed with the perception more is going on underneath. The facing
illustrations also help to slow down the pace at which the poems are read.
The poems, or letters, have vulnerability and a generous humour. Here quoted
in full 'B':
B because
you are
pushing out time
looking down and
back-front:
bearing up
people say and say
what else
is blue?
besides the sky
played
and
broke
in.
Some of these poems seem like personal memories and comments about others but
are not tied down enough to form characterisations, and yet feel like
individuals, and not collaged from many samples. At the same time they appear
to be actions of a more generalised type, brought about by the fact of being
simply letters of the alphabet. Here in full:
O I can't say
so
well:
I'd open inside
an
opening usually
closed:
outer things coming in
orgy
inner things coming out:
operating
in
spaces around
glances
mixing
any
ordering
of our
selves.
The contrast with Abeceda by Vitezslav
Nezval is interesting. Nezval had the dancer Milca Mayerova dance the shapes
of the letters and other associated shapes coming from his poems. Their
combined performance/work made into a book by Karel Teige in 1926. The shapes
of the letters are the driving force behind his poems, although alliteration
and assonance with the respective letters plays a part. The juxtapositions
and shifts of meaning are more external and surreal than those coming from
the more psychologically considered spaces of Gutkind's poems. Both Nezval
and Gutkind delight in the sounding of letter 'R'. Here is Gutkind:
R is
reeling
in the sounds
again
by the pond
a group of geese razing
the grass
rip-rip
rip-rip
While the poems hold onto a base through their alliteration, and the letters
having been given attributes, there is interaction with the outside or the
rest of the poem. There is fracturing or rather a fractal breaking up between
the dimensions of what is individual and what is external to it, till the
borders can become unclear. But at the same time the attributes of the
letters still hold.
This is further enhanced and subtracted (both of these) by Simmons' illustrations
that, tentatively, I will describe as de-cohering cityscapes, caught in a
flash or barely managing to hold together, sometimes with extra stuff piled
in or stuff taken out, though they are more than this and have a power on
their own, with an abstract energy.
A quote from discussions between Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel in The
Singular Objects of Architecture (2000,
translation by R. Bononno, 2002), I think describes some of what happens in
this book. 'These are the means by which architecture creates a virtual space
or a mental space; it's a way of tricking the senses. But it's primarily a
way of preserving a destabilized area.' Both artist and poet do this latter,
independently and together.
© James Harvey 2010
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