Scott Bryson reviews MLA Chernoff's SCRIED FUNDAMENTS (2022) in Broken Pencil

Scott Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of MLA Chernoff's SCRIED FUNDAMENTS (2022) in Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

Chapbook, MLA Chernoff, 20 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $5

The poems in this collection defy conclusive interpretation, but they appear to record a reality that’s now very familiar to most of us: life in lockdown, trapped at home, adrift in thought.

As the “SCRIED” of the title suggests (future-telling via reflective surface), we get a distorted view of this narrative. It’s bent by the crystal ball we’re peering into as much as by the off-kilter discourse of the person who’s speaking. There are enough instances of “our,” “we” and allusions to sex in these poems to suggest that someone is there with Chernoff (assuming Chernoff is the speaking “I”), though we don’t hear from or about this other — only of their shared role in these circumstances.

Chernoff’s mood is somehow both manic and dour, sometimes feverish: “six long months of constant clickery… Every day rides the mucus of a snail… every night is Friday night and Monday / morning put together, burnt out and without end.” Compound words are regularly invented (“hornyscared,” “givingspread”) and a complex vocabulary is employed — you’ll find plenty of obscure terms to look up. A lone snippet of text is repeated here, in the first poem and the last: “I gotta make a decision / leave tonight or live and die this way.” It’s the plainest bit of speech Chernoff uses — a recurring moment of lucidity that never resolves.

SCRIED FUNDAMENTS is attention-grabbing, clever and regularly baffling. It’s sometimes recognizable and sometimes foreign, and though it often seems impossible to decipher, there’s never a dull moment.

Graham Sigurdson reviews Amanda Earl's a field guide of fanciful bugs (2021) at Broken Pencil

Graham Sigurdson was good enough to provide a review of Amanda Earl's a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of such, after Bryce Warnes reviewed such over at The Pamphleteer. You can see Sigurdson's original review here; although I should mention that, while this is the ninth chapbook above/ground press has done of Earl's work, it isn't the ninth chapbook the press has done of her visuals (this seems an important distinction).

A field guide of fanciful bugs

Originally published as an ebook in 2010, a field guide to fanciful bugs is the ninth chapbook of Amanda Earl’s visual poetry from Ottawa’s above/ground Press. The fanciful bugs in question here are several visual poems made up of single letters or small words. A group of M’s are arranged cleverly, labeled as “The Gnasher.” Several V’s make up “the vampire mosquito.” It’s a playful idea-and indeed, ‘whimsy’ is one of Earl’s stated goals in her bio. But the relationships between letter form, image, poem, and name are rocky and inconsistent, prompting unease. A group of V’s are “the snow bugs,” while later an arrangement of the name ‘Max’ is “the small butterflies of Max Ernst.” The central idea of these visual poems is revealed at the end of the chapbook, but rather than building out a logic to justify it, it feels like a sudden gear shift toward the end. On her website, Earl notes that she has grapheme synaesthesia, where in colour and text often blend together in her perception. Considered through this lens, things make a little more sense, with the folding text and interplay of shapes likely looking significantly different to those who experience this. In this sense, a field guide to fanciful bugs serves as a strong example of synaesthesic art at work. I only wish I’d been able to enter the experience a bit more.

Cole Bisson reviews Nathanael O’Reilly's BLUE (2020) in Broken Pencil

Cole Bisson was good enough to provide the first review of Nathanael O’Reilly's BLUE (2020) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

Litzine, by Nathanael O’Reilly, 40 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $5

Ever wonder what the working-class white guy around the corner is thinking? You know, the one who has bumper stickers of Nirvana, screams that Trump is an idiot, and has teeth stained yellow from cigarettes? Surprisingly, he’s got an in-depth mental life, and he’s writing a book about it. Or perhaps that’s not a surprise.

Blue by Nathaniel O’Reilly is a tender song for male alienation and longing. O’Reilly has a vulnerable touch that fully flushes out the themes in each poem. He grapples with losing friends as he ages, the fear of becoming a father, and childhood memories that teach him something new every day.

The main drawback is that, for all of it’s loneliness, O’Reilly’s work sounds like many others, and comes off as wannabe edgy. Juvenile warbles like “I lay on the floor / listening to Nirvana / writing my first letter / to her” give the vibe of someone trying desperately to stand out from the crowd, and that inevitably falls flat. O’Reilly isn’t saying anything new or adding a different voice, and thus drowns himself out in a saturated market.

Granted, there are certain poems where he tackles issues with tenderness and altruism. In an ode to who I imagine is his child, he asks “Will you love learning / like your parents, will you / be athletic, artistic, scientific?” When ruminating about who his child might grow up to be, O’Reilly touches on real parental anxieties and demonstrates them. He presents wishful thinking and imagines himself walking hand-in-hand with his child for as long as possible.

It’s these touching moments that give Blue a sense of urgency. Contrasted with lines like “The orangutan reaches the peak of his climb, / surveys the scene where he defecated,” the vulnerability of a man comes off as authentic. You just wish there wasn’t a warped edge to this sensibility.

Scott Bryson reviews James Hawes' The Hotdog Variations (2021) in Broken Pencil

Scott Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of James Hawes' The Hotdog Variations (2021) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

The Hotdog Variations : Chapbook, James Hawes, 14 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $4

Never has “a hotdog with mustard & relish” been so elevated. This humble phrase constitutes the entirety of James Hawes’ chapbook. Poem after poem is built by rearranging — and using all of — the 24 characters of that dog description. Each line and stanza is a jumble of the letters in “a hotdog with mustard & relish.”

For some reason, the word “with” is never altered, always appearing as is. The remaining text shifts into a mix of non-sense — such as “do thog & rast / umd with is a rhel” — as well as strange but sensible verse: “a slide with & through stardom.” Some of these poems, viewed individually, evoke tangible feelings regardless of one’s ability to understand the content. When the reassembled words in a poem are all curt, for example (that done on purpose by Hawes, one would assume), they speak with anger or disgust.

Nearly more interesting than these poems is imagining Hawes’ process. Why a hotdog? Did he use some sort of anagram generator or painstakingly rearrange these letters from scratch? Do the seemingly nonsensical lines make sense to him, in some way? Why no ketchup?

Cam Gordon reviews G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #11 (2020) in Broken Pencil

Cam Gordon was good enough to provide the first review of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #11, edited by Elizabeth Robinson (2020) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

‘Guest #11’ feels like a final artifact of a time that is never coming back

Zine, Elizabeth Robinson (editor), 60 pgs, above/ground press, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, ON K1H 7M9

Short on words and high on concept, Guest 11 is a delicate collection of prose, poems and short stories. Each edition of this journal from above/ground press features a different guest editor. When Elizabeth Robinson took the wheel, she invited nine contributors, all of them recent contacts from her life and work.

Not unlike lovely silly stuff like the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the first four Led Zeppelin numbers, it’s a good collection in terms of variety. Interestingly, Robinson wrote the foreward for this collection in early, early March 2020 — mere days before the COVID-19 pandemic truly began to ravage the planet. Thus, the zine already feels like a final artifact of a time that is never coming back. Given that Robinson chose poets and pals with whom she had recently communicated to be the contributors, it’s both recent and distant, and there’s a sadness, a kind of warp to the experience of reading it. This might not have been planned. But this is straight poetry here, and its grace is that it isn’t trying to do too much, nor be overly smart or pulpy or of the moment.

This is a passion project to be sure, and given the breadth and scope that these works offer, there’s probably something for everyone here.

Scott Bryson reviews Derek Beaulieu's CABARET (2020) in Broken Pencil

Scott Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of Derek Beaulieu's CABARET (2020) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

Chapbook, Derek Beaulieu, 14 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $4

It doesn’t take long to grasp the technicality of what this is — in Derek Beaulieu’s words, “symmetrical visual poetry, all using the same typeface.” The stumper is why it’s so hard to turn away from it. Perhaps bewilderment breeds amusement.

Beaulieu’s latest collection of concrete poems begin from central, seemingly random letters or punctuation marks, with like letters radiating out in two directions. It creates something that’s not quite a mirrored image or an inkblot, but the opposite sort of reflection, if there’s a name for that.

After a short time communing with these images, you’ll likely give up trying to decipher what, if anything, the selection or arrangement of letters means. Your focus will turn instead to the method behind the symmetry, as you maddeningly turning the page around and around to see what it looks like from every direction. Satisfied that a symmetry of sorts does exist, you’ll move on to the shape and the typeface, Does it suggest anything? The text is certainly carnivalesque and whimsical, a marquee font if there is one — deserving of the title Cabaret. The smaller designs could be headlines from a performance poster.

In the end, this appears to be more a feast for the eyes than a puzzle to decode. It demands your engagement, which on its own is a desirable achievement.

Stefanie Ucci reviews Dani Spinosa's Civilization (2020) in Broken Pencil

Stefanie Ucci was good enough to provide the first review of Dani Spinosa's Civilization (2020) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

‘Civilization’ will blow you right through the classroom wall

Chapbook, Dani Spinosa, 7 pgs, above/ground press, genericpronoun.com, @genericpronoun, $4

It’s the first day of school, class is in session, and today’s subject is history — or something like it. Oh, and hopefully your desk has a seatbelt, because Civilization will blow you right through the classroom wall. Dani Spinosa, an experimental poet, typesetter, and co-founder of the experimental feminist outfit Gap Riot Press, lives up to her reputation as a proven poetry punk as she takes you on lurching and disorienting tour of domination across oceans and centuries.

The chapbook’s voice is a practice in momentum, and each page brings a different colonization and a new opponent. It visits Victorian England and the fall of Rome, speaking as Moctezuma, but a unique version of the conqueror, one who is hellbent on capturing Charleston. Spinosa’s references spin and spill forth with such confidence that you’ll regret not paying attention in history class more so than you’ll question what you know or don’t about eons long past.

This chapbook’s shape-shifting time-traveling speaker might actually be power itself, personified. Collapsing space and time with such weight and gusto, able to justify anything in the name of expansion and control. Empire is the protagonist, but in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it always?

“It’s 1690. I’m in the Modern era. I declare war on the Spanish and start to move south,” Spinosa writes. “First, I take Rouen, which the Spanish conquered from the French. Later I’ll take Paris, too. The French have lost so much before I even arrive.”

I enjoy the barrage of early civilizations and, as the poet likely intends, I feel confused and challenged by the personality these eras are given. The text’s considerable nonchalance around defeating countries is paired with a fear that eventually they will be the one to get defeated, and I felt the same way about the chapbook — I get it, I’m in on it, or maybe I don’t, I’m not? Of course, defeat is not an option for you, nor for civilization. Wild.

Scott Bryson reviews rob mclennan’s Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU (2020) in Broken Pencil #88

Scott Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of rob mclennan’s Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU (2020) over at Broken Pencil (although he seems not to have actually enjoyed the experience). Thanks so much!

A recent TVO documentary, Tripping the Rideau Canal, is a four-hour, real-time voyage down 27 kilometres of the titular waterway, with historical factoids sprinkled throughout. The vicarious ride is not dissimilar to enjoying a batch of rob mclennan’s poetry – but not because reading his chapbooks feel like four hours.

            The poems in this book were produced for various outlets over the years, compiled here, presumably, for the Lunch Poems reading series at SFU in Vancouver. But they don’t drift too far apart from each other, all tethered to landscape. Location is the paramount concern and there are few people present. “This human activity” is mentioned only distantly, as if it were a foreign concept.

            The phrases in the poems are typically brief and enigmatic. In the collection’s opening poem, mclennan lays out an apt warning (and perhaps a challenge) prefacing the surprising work of inspecting one’s environment: “To break this open, / is to understand the weather.”

Joel William Vaughan reviews Simina Banu’s Tomorrow, adagio (2019) in Broken Pencil #88

Joel William Vaughan was good enough to provide the first review of Simina Banu’s Tomorrow, adagio (2019) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much!

Banu, or her designer, has appropriately flipped a scribbled bust of 19-century Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu on its head. “The pieces in this chapbook are phonetic, visual and (at times) literal ‘translations’ of the following poems,” reads her paratext, listing nine of Eminescu’s originals. Tomorrow, adagio calls into question the purpose of translation – a process whose limitations have plagued and inspired writers as long as there’s been more than one spoken tongue. Banu’s subtitle pulls no punches in its loose approach to translation: these are original poems, “inspired by the work of Mihai Eminescu.”

            I love the concept, but gestural translations gets away from me. Without an understanding of the Romanian originals, one cannot know when the text is phonetic, visual, or literal translation. The experience can be hard to follow: “A Russian yes, fierce data,” reads “From the strainer,” “O native land: my, my, / Some pot, to cook in, smoke, / bang, riot.” The title poem, “Tomorrow, adagio,” is similarly irreverent: “Tomorrow clips toes into the rice,” it reads, “evolution having decided we don’t need that filth. / I drink it anyway, wear old jeans and don’t / order the cabbage rolls.” I appreciate the exercise, and am interested in Banu’s exploring the bounds and motivations of literary translations – but on the ground, rhyme and reason go a long way. Without that, I fear one line lacks any impact on the one that comes after it.

Joel William Vaughan reviews Hawad’s Furigraphic Horizons, trans. Jake Syersak (2019) in Broken Pencil #88

Joel William Vaughan was good enough to provide the first review of Hawad’s Furigraphic Horizons, translated by Jake Syersak (2019) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much!

Translator Jake Syersak selects three poems from Hawad’s Furigraphic collection for this English language chapbook. The poet, Hawad, belongs to the nomadic Saharan Tuareg people, and the poems were composed in Tamazight dialect using Tifinagh script. However, Hawad alters the already obscure characters with an invented method of furigraphy, a wild calligraphic brushwork. These were subsequently translated into French by the author and his wife, Hélène Claudot-Hawad. Thus, conceptually, the project is a marvel: Hawad’s Tuared-Tamazight tongue, written in Tifinagh, collaboratively rewritten into French with the Roman alphabet and again into English by Syersak. Then, of course, these were printed and bound by rob mclennan on his trademark coloured copy paper and sent, most likely, to your mailbox. Following so far?

            The poems themselves are compelling, meant to achieve a “literary transcendence of the self to encompass ubiquity and escape the superficial physical and mental constrains of time and space,” Hawad’s subject matter appropriately returns again and again to a search for solid, extrasensory truth.

            His verse is punctuated by galloping images and grammatical puzzles. One is never sure where he is headed, because one is never sure where he’s situated to begin with. Just try reading “The Swell of the Horizons” – “Iron hoof horse,” / Inside the brain head pebble / brain pebble head / horse inside the hoof / The fatal march toward utopia / forces the rider to drunk / the swell vertigo tempestuous urine / of his horse inside the head.”

            To read Hawad is disorienting, to say the least, but any determined search for immaterial truth should be. Hawad’s poems are fascinating on their own, but the implications brought to the fore a dogpile of languages make these social poems sedimentary, worthy of study.