last night I decided to grab a poetry book at random. (without looking) I glommed onto Idea's Mirror by Stephen Ratcliffe (Poets & Poets 1999). I have quite a few poetry books but I don't read a great deal of poetry now. I used to. I think I wanted to "know the field". now I know the field's too big to contain. I also aint sure I get the definition of poetry qua poetry. I don't think I want to secure the perimeter, if you get my clever drift. I enjoy adventure tho. the point I am wandering around seems to be my dislike of poetry that is "just poetry". eh? I mean, it often seems as if there were something gravely normative about even experimental poetry. I want my head to explode when I read poetry, or colours to drift together in some grace of harmony, or something extraordinary. I don't have patience, it is true. there's a poem by Brenda Coultas in Fascicle 2, where the first line made me wonder: should Kentucky be referred to as they? to the degree that that seems like a matter of poet and editor not paying attention... and the poem went where expected. well, just to say, I saw Brenda read a few years ago, dry and kinda mumbly, and I thought she was terrific. I'm talking my dilemma. there are times enough I could pass that 1st line infraction by, or even scour it for some glint. Fascicle as a whole bothers me just by being too much. its vision doesn't sustain me. not that it would make me feel better if it were some New Young Poets Against the War on Advertising anthology. I admire Fascicle's breadth but can't wait for all of it to coalesce. at what point did I lose you? I meant to speak of Ratcliffe's book, now I fear I've stoked the expectation that Idea's Mirror is a saviour. it is, in a sense. it drew me in. hey, it's like proto-flarf, man!!! just kidding. I've only scanned it previously, it wants a slower read. it consists of 144 pages of double-spaced lines, with no sections. the lines are short. each one has a single comma in it. there's no other punctuation. each line can stand discrete as well as link to the next line. in this, it calls to mind how a simple counting drill like hay(na)ku introdcues concatenation. one is both led on and urged to stay in the phrase. this work, then, is one long poem, and one long sentence. I just noticed that each page has 12 lines, so with 144 pages, there are 12 cubed lines. calling Ron Silliman!!! it's pissa hard to quote from this thing, you necessarily have to cut a chunk of the snake, but I'll slice a morsel natheless:

...............how words

subject, green of eyes

in sunlight, certain as that

meaning certain, that one



notice that you read subject 1st as a verb, then as a noun. you simultaneously read the enjambed phrase and the linear one. whoa, double helix! I think the remarks I made earlier, they reflect a sense of poetry glut. some while ago, Catherine Daly ragged on chapbooks on her blog (not that there are any chapbooks on her blog), calling them mere calling cards. she made harsh argument but I have to agree that chaps tend toward incompleteness or thinness: like, incomprehensive gatherings of work until a real book is made. I don't mean chaps can't be complete. I thought Alli Warren's Hounds a terrific, complete work. that's what I want to see. Ratcliffe's work here is complete. it's not a buncha poems. I'm overwhelmed by Fascicle's bits and pieces. I really don't want to read works in mags or anthologies with the word from in front of the title. I want to spend the afternoon with Idea's Mirror. there, I said it.