Cristalle Smith reviews Melissa Spohr Weiss' Motion & Force (2022) via Instagram,

Cristalle Smith was good enough to provide a first review of Melissa Spohr Weiss' Motion & Force (2022) via Instagram. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As she writes:

Motion & Force
Melissa Spohr Weiss
@sonnets_and_sloths

above/ground press 2022
@rob_mclennan_writer

Form frees noise, more than cacophony, in Melissa Spohr Weiss’s Motion & Force. Nip utterance builds alliteration into terse experiences that defy narrativizing: “Can a nature-eater earn / tenure? Can a cute crane // taunt a recent teen?” (“Utterance”). Listen. “O, Calypso! I hold paid holidays,” an unknown speaker cries in “Physical Body” while “Holy playboy ladys abolish / cops.” Find sense in pattern, repetition, an alphabet soup of rules to count to ten. Tin cans spill tomato broth and squishy noodles.

Is that an oboe boo floating in? A clarinet reed? Read the lines down, then up, then down again: “A rat entered yer rented / tavern. Ate yer nerve” (“Everyday Event”). Tercets with enjambment. Some kind of sonnet(not?) That’s okay, “An erect centaur can’t eat / true tuna” (“Utterance”). Did you have a dream(nightmare) you can’t remember? But still hear the sounds? Pluck string taut and mince meaning-acrostic-acoustic-an office, “O conifer comet!” (“Motion & Force”). Some poetry makes sense sounds in pilfering a rabbit tart.

Get in, losers. We are blasting this anthem until 5:00 AM.