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 The capricious capitalization and the pell-mell and dizzy flight of these expressions create new and improbable beings of considerable splendor. In all her work, however concealed may be her meanings, there is a constant search for precise form on a plane of being that did not before exist.
Reviewed by Bob Williams
Inch Aeons
by Nuala M. Archer
Les Figues Press
http://www.lesfigues.com/inch_aeons.html
2006, ISBN 0-9766371-6-2, $15.00, 105 pages
This is Archer’s fifth book. She suffered injuries from a life-threatening car accident and recuperated in Jerusalem where she enrolled in a theatre degree program at the School of Visual Theatre. She continues to perform with the Jerusalem Theatre Company at festivals around the world. She is an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University.
Poetry triggers certain expectations. However idiosyncratic these may be, poetry that disappoints these expectations fails to be poetry for at least that one reader. Archer’s work has limited ability to communicate, it uses compound words to an extent that English must regard with extreme discomfort, and it uses the haiku verse form in moderately long poems as stanzas. Run-ons run amok with every extremity explored.
And it all works.
The extraordinarily complicated compound words bring us nose to nose with what words actually are, what they mean, and what they can mean. “Sheerness-of-Nearness-of-Is,” to take an example at random, suggests wonderfully a sudden explosion of a verbal consciousness that forces its way into English – whether it likes it or not.
The many individual haiku perform as the best of them do at the hands of the Japanese originators except the fused meanings there arise from the forced juncture of ordinary elements. Archer takes her haiku to more cryptic levels:
Alongside of Night –
As Anonymous Rustling
Eternity – You
Her run-ons get a feisty quality of show-no-mercy. This is Aba Cus:
Familiar Years
Of Practice have Brought this Pa-
Paya of Indi-
Rect Appeal – Flowers
Of Release – Vitalities
That Virtue Relap-
Ses Into – like Worms
Fattening on the Wit of
Yo-Rick’s Rickety-
Split Skull in Earth for
Twenty-three Years When It Is
Confounded – Flutthered
The capricious capitalization and the pell-mell and dizzy flight of these expressions create new and improbable beings of considerable splendor. In all her work, however concealed may be her meanings, there is a constant search for precise form on a plane of being that did not before exist. In her use of constraints and keenly developed sense of play there is a resemblance to the creative theories of the Oulipists.
This is a consistently executed body of work. For the lovers of exciting poetry it will be a worthy addition to their collection. In shape, execution, and imaginative drawings, this is another lovely example of Les Figues Press fine work.
About the Reviewer: Bob Williams is retired and lives in a small town with his wife, dogs and a cat. He has been collecting books all his life, and has done freelance writing, mostly on classical music. His principal interests are James Joyce, Jane Austen and Homer. His book Joyce Country, a guide to persons and places, can be accessed at: http://www.grand-teton.com/service/Persons_Places
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