Three of the poems and a long excerpt from my
afterword are at
http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mark-weiss-3-poems-excerpt-from.html.
Best,
Mark
At 04:36 PM 9/8/2010, you wrote:
>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
New from Chax Press: Mark Weiss, As Landscape.
$16. Order from http://www.chax.org/poets/weiss.htm
"What a beautiful set of circumstances! What a
lovely concatenation of particulars. Here is the
poet alive in every sense of the word, and
through every one of his senses. Instead of
missing a beat or a part, Weiss’ fragments are
like Chekhov’s short storiesthe more that gets
left out, the more they seem to contain… One can
hear echoes from all the various
ancestors...[but] the voice, at its center, its
core, is pure Mark Weiss. His use of the fragment
is both elegant and bafflingly clear, a pure
musical threnody…[it] opens a window, not only
into a mind, but a person, a personality, this
human figure at the emotional center of the poem."
M.G. Stephens, in Jacket.
http://jacketmagazine.com/40/r-weiss-rb-stephens.shtml
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