JIM
MCCRARY Reviews
portrait of a lesser subject by e. tracy Grinnell
(elis press, Lawrence, Kansas, 2015)
and
Shade by Jamie Townsend
(elis press, Lawrence, Kansas., 2015)
 |
| 2 chaps with the reviewer's cat Iris |
Wow. A new press has landed in
Lawrence and has issued two new books that look terrific. A great pleasure to find these two books and
to meet David James Miller the
editor/publisher of elis press. Lawrence
has a long and notable literary past
that includes various presses, magazines, zines and sundry other mode of poetic
distribution. We, that’s me, welcome
Miller and elis press and hope it is a long time spent.
e. tracy grinnell’s publication portrait
of a lesser subject at first glance and flip thru is stunning in a way both
familiar in shape on the page (as having seen this layout before but not to
identify in any way). The use of form,
to me, a welcome and not just pushing the letters around the page…. This collection is divided into three parts
and each are as equal in the pleasure given to reader. Me that is.
The first section of the frame made up of 6 “lines” of text made up of 1,2,3
words per “line” and, as example, this:
perhaps
duration sits
looking
reflecting
a drift in
leagues
or this………..
against no wall
no tide broke
in thought
night sight
or
local recovery
point
I am not that person
to comment on or make connections with the reference from John Cage or the
“title” of this section. Of course, that
said, these small mentions do have a frame and are contained by the font but….like
cage says….sort of….we see what we see and hear what we have heard before
perhaps. What works for me and lets me
read twice just for the recognition received…simplicity doesn’t have to be
obvious or promoted. Just said. I really do not want to make this sound like
times past and at the same time want to claim no personal or close relationship
with what is now the common critical response.
I like how these look and what they say and how they come together. Fresh.
A hit…take them in, hold them, blow them out.
The second section of
this book, dear land is a series of
poems titled mnemonic [1-12]. Unless something has changed since I
Googled it a minute ago…we here are directed to think about the recalled and
why not. All the puns set up by the
mention of “land” or “dear” or “mnemonic”
are available for the taking. Or
not. What is also available is
Grinnell’s skill at a choice of
text. Playful and intent at the
twain. As well…something from I might
guess a reading of others:
“…or the proper distance
from a sentence
is the mode of address
from that height
the
cause of death
Is the oath…”
This is text that
makes my head rattle and if it does recall, for me, Leslie Scalapino….I am
double pleased.
The final section of
this book is death/is
an/innumerable/accuracy. That’s
pretty funny right there. And again first notice is how these final poems do
show on a page….full and spaced across and down each one as if meant to be so
and are that…all that. Every text here
seems put together with great experience and sometimes almost in a way
remembered.
I don’t have the tech
to reproduce ‘exactly’ the layout of these last poems….and deadline looms…trust
me…they are to be seen.
“…abstraction insists because…” sits as a single line on page 71…opening a
page full of text as it does to almost defining the abstract thought. And even if, to me, again, from the Bay Area
past, sounds like RG which is not a bad thing.
All of which continues
and can be as a pleasure to a reader who has the time. Grinnell should be well read and rewardedl of
the kind of recognition this book might encourage.
====================================================
A long time ago………no
really a long, long time ago, when I first really tried to read the poems of
Ken Irby I thought to myself: You are
really fucked here. I have no idea what the
fuck he is talking about half the time.
He has read so much and is so much ‘smarter’ than I am. Now that I have known Ken for almost 40
years………it don’t matter anymore. We talk
the way we talk…in the co-op parking lot or over a beer someplace…make up for
not talking. And I still read his
poems………as much as I can. So here with
Jamie Townsend book Shade, which I
want to read and am. What goes past is
past and then perhaps some thing, some where will make that up. A lot of “I have no idea..” here. Yet the same be said by me for many and why
not. I am not asking no one no way to
know what the fuck I am referring too in my work. That’s how it is. Unless you can find a way, some new secret
format that only those with a copy of your key can read it………….what’s the
point. So I will ask…how much does it
matter to you, author, if me, the reader, could care less or just don’t know
how…to know who you are talking about.
So what if what I look for makes you ill? Is there really anything more than you write
it and I read it? You put it down…I pick
it up?
And that is just from
reading the blubs on the back of the elis press production of Shade by Jamie Townsend who I very much
doubt is a 74 year old white male cracker like me living out here in
Kansas. And right now I am thinking that
I in no way can write any more about this book without making a fool of myself
in print. That said. Been there and done that.
Often times I read
backwards and here discover the final words in this book:
“…something like romance…”
Standing as it does
above an almost full white page. That
seems like a good way to end a book. A
good beginning for a person like me. It
matters to me that the writer is telling
this on the page…something like romance….what that is. Or not.
Something to think about.
His beginnings as
well. He does begin in sections titled Paradise Now, Propositions and Common
People to render and list, in a recognized fashion, almost define, the
future. Descriptive text of times and
place and changes of a day and night or more.
The spoken environment of ‘your’ city, ‘your lover’ and/or ‘your
language’. As he says: “…the utopic kernel beneath the ornate shell
of its failure – the body inside the artifice without it…”.
The section Thrown Shade adds to a collection in my
world of “poems with comments” to them.
The great Red Monk poems of Lew Welch, sometime by J. Spicer and J.
Kyger, E. Dorn too and I’ve seen
others. Here is nice he begins with one
full page and almost 4/5th of another page clean white….no text and
a comment at the bottom finally…or perhaps comment the wrong term. I confess.
Long detailed prose boxes of unpunctuated and unbroken text….the poem
again or call it what you will. Jamie
Townsend has a great talent. I want to
read this book more and again. Will.
_______________
These two books are
beautifully designed and set and covered and selected. All good will and success to Elis press and
David James Miller. (www.elispress.com)
*****
jim mccrary till lives in Lawrence, Ks. Recent poems in House Organ and Truck. Having a Beer with Emily D was intrudoced in a limited edition as was Folio 2015, a "write through" of some Shakespeare poems. New collection due from Theenk later this year. Other recent publications include Not Not, Es Verdad, Mental Text and Po Doom. Here he is (left) in a fur vest, late 1960s, a loft in the Bowery, New York City:
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