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steveatwaywords's review
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Howe takes "found poetry" to a new level, assembling fragments and her own thinking into provocative frames. Some of these lean closer to display art than poetry (indeed, pieces of the title poem have been framed as wall art), and in fact the entire work has somehow been released with musician David Grubbs on vinyl (and streaming). But that deserves its own review.
I was most compelled and inspired by the opening length prose poem, "Since." Slipping through time and across figurations of language and poetry, this (I think) autobiographical reverie is haunting in its connections and, in her own words, "chthonic echo-signals." Now what does that mean? I think, that as the words are invoked, arranged, patterned, and deferred, we sense evidence, markers, of not just undertone between them but of something deeper still, underworld.
And so "reading" this book is not exactly what we are about (though the final poem of three, "Space Permitting" is accessible enough), but perhaps intoning, examining for installation, or submerging.
This is not an artist flippantly tossing fragments onto paper--I am currently reading her famous My Emily Dickinson which powerfully redraws our cliched tropes about this brilliant poet--Howe is onto something much larger than mere narrative or traditional verse can tolerate.
I was most compelled and inspired by the opening length prose poem, "Since." Slipping through time and across figurations of language and poetry, this (I think) autobiographical reverie is haunting in its connections and, in her own words, "chthonic echo-signals." Now what does that mean? I think, that as the words are invoked, arranged, patterned, and deferred, we sense evidence, markers, of not just undertone between them but of something deeper still, underworld.
And so "reading" this book is not exactly what we are about (though the final poem of three, "Space Permitting" is accessible enough), but perhaps intoning, examining for installation, or submerging.
This is not an artist flippantly tossing fragments onto paper--I am currently reading her famous My Emily Dickinson which powerfully redraws our cliched tropes about this brilliant poet--Howe is onto something much larger than mere narrative or traditional verse can tolerate.
greeniezona's review
reflective
4.0
An impulse choice at the library. I found it interesting, especially the last section "Space Permitting" -- created from Thoreau's writing about a shipwreck that killed Margaret Fuller -- but there wasn't anything that really grabbed me or that I felt much of a connection with.
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