madhat-press/products/the-lice-of-christ-by-bill-yarrow James Robison on The Lice of Christ: The Lice of Christ (MadHat Press 2014) may be the most subversive book of poems I have read. The poet seems manic, word drunk and antagonistic towards an enterprise, a contest in which he is compelled to compete. His poems behave like lit fuses, destroying themselves in a shower of brilliance as they attack themselves, their reader, the act of poetry, of the futility of verse and its petty, easily-conjured and momentary effects. Like a fuse too, the books movement seems to drive scarily towards an explosion which will forever fragment meanings and the poets who work for them, (even Yeats isnt spared). Often the reader feels mocked for admiring a couplet, a connection, the inspired invention involved in the making of a list (there are many lists herein, absurdist how-to instructions or maxims or aphorisms gone askew, it seems, and they can be profound or quippy) and often one is saddened by the possibilities of a poem that seems sketched, blocked-in, then besmirched or abandoned; the vandalisms committed here are inbuilt parts of the books doubled aesthetic. The son of god had lice, says this poet, but read on. He belongs to the noble and merciful few who groomed the savior, eased his suffering, picked the vermin off Christs body. But read on. The sentiment is an analogy, possibly a hostile one, from Adolphus of Smyrna and from a volume named The Incanteron, one most readers will not know. So whatever motives we may attach to the title are (the author shrugs) not his, for good or bad. This whirlpool of gaming, (we see the pun on Life of Christ, we recognize that some will find only blasphemy, we understand that the author is celebrating his craft and chosen art with a quote and we see too the mischief in the choice of title and its meaning and shadow meanings) informs the whole volume. At its best, the work concentrates on doing the enormously-complicated and difficult business of making poetry and making a sequence of poems which sing, even, or especially, dark songs. At its weakest, the book works against its own purposes, is conflicted, is a manifestation of a writer so gifted he doubts that what he is up to could have much purpose. -James Robison, The Illustrator
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 23:45:07 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015