Every so often we talk about writing little reviews for each other  
here, but we seldom do much about it (mea maxima culpa, BTW).

I'm reading poetry quite a lot, & recently, after years of not doing  
anything, I've at least been writing short note about each book. I'm  
not about to drop a load of those on you, but I've just been reading  
Mark Weiss's new book, As Landscape, & want to pass on a few thoughts  
about this fine volume.

Mark Weiss. As Landscape (Chax Press 2010).

Mark Weiss writes perception especially well, taking that term in as  
wide a sense as Pound took 'image.' Weiss takes his place in the  
tradition of USAmerican poetics that descends from Pound, Williams, &  
others. in his 'A Provisional Poetics,' an essay concluding As  
Landscape, he speaks to the way that provisionality works, in a  
poetics of process that pays as close attention to all the world that  
he encounters. The poems themselves demonstrate how such a provisional  
process operates, carefully avoiding what he calls 'The language  
impoverished by forethought.'  Each section of these serial poems  
(serial both in the book's 4 sections, & in each poem) arrives, was  
caught on the move by the writer, in an act of perception that gets  
inscribed most often as image, often moving. Weiss is especially good  
as rendering what's seen, or heard, or felt/touched, in closely  
observed quick cuts.

i fund the casual (& certainly not causal) development of each poem  
fascinating; many of the small bits seem at first unconnected, but  
their accumulation works, & I never felt dissatisfied by the end. the  
breaks allow the reader to fill in the lacunae in whatever way s/he  
can or wishes to. The individual 'stanzas' (I'll call them) stand well  
on their own, almost haiku-like in their intense articulation of  
percept. Often they render 'landscape,' if we take that term to  
include soundscapes, historical marks & inscriptions, bodies. Only in  
the final section, 'From Darkest Europe,' do the two poems, 'Begins  
and Ends with Blood' & 'From Darkest Europe,' offer something like  an  
'argument,' but even there it's carried by the perceptual images.

An example? Here's the first stanza from 'XXVI' of 'Figures: 32 Poems':

Some sort of weird distortion. In the distance
under the mist
gulls on the beach the size of turkeys. A heat mirage. The air
wavers, the ruck on the sand
appears to skate on water.

I like both the specificity of the images, & the way the  
(re)presentation reveals something about the observer. Weiss also has  
a fine sense of line, & line breaks; there's a sound rhythmic motion  
to all the poems here.

Which means As Landscape is a damn good book. It definitely brings the  
reader into touch with any number of & kinds of landscape,' but that  
'As' reminds us that there's a lot more going on.


Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]

http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/

Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us  
the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the  
ignorance of the community.

  		Oscar Wilde