Review of Koneazny Book/Bauman Photo/Beckman Sonnet/Coletti Paintings/

Review of Paula Koneazny's Installation

 by Ed Coletti  

Noticing well and over the years how people have different ideas about what poetry is, I wonder how the vast majority of occasional poetry readers and even traditional poetry lovers might feel about the exquisite experimental work in Paula Koneazny’s little combined poetry/photography book, Installation (Tarpaulin Sky Press 2012).  I suspect that many, not discovering an easy answer to “What does it mean?” would reject it outright.  However, were they to express their “reason” to me, I would respond in accordance with the title of my first mentor John Ciardi whose text was titled HowDoes A Poem Mean?

As might be expected here from the assistant editor of the concrete and experimental Volt Magazine, Koneazny’s “meaning” begins and ends in studiedly tangible photographic images which may defy immediate prosaic description but which serve as poetic installations.

The poet spends quite a bit of her writing minimizing the essentiality of words or their ultimate value.  However, she is a poet and, by definition, requires words.  But she uses them in much the same manner as she uses photography, to create or build her image as in “Stele 1” which ends,

we can

w/ frontal cast

iron / clad

& back slash

separate (in other words

sideways)

suture

Lest I leave the totally false impression that MS Koneazny is at war with words, I’ll point out right here that she looks into their use and their usage as few do. 

Prepositions are sometimes added to verbs to say that something is true now:

She jots down the molecular structure of anxiety.

“You morsel, you,” he scribbles in.

William Carlos Williams’ immortal “No ideas but in things” is wonderfully rampant here in Koneazny’s “Field Guide To A Girl,”

neighbors push their backyards together

leave her the crack between/ gaping hole

where appliances were once electrified

This also makes me mindful of “Seven Songs & Song Pictures,” (the English translation by Jerome Rothenberg from Ojibwa by Frances Densmore,

Song Picture no. 54

in the middle of the sea

long room of the sea

in which I’m sitting

Each song picture is combined with a primitive drawing, a most concrete image.  How like Paula Koneazny’s use of photography. 

And from “In a declarative sentence much can come in between:”

He had no formal training; aluminum and copper gave him a shudder.

Then one day he stumbled into some driftwood.  The next thing he knew he

owned 3 pianos. No longer having to illuminate anything, he experienced

a sense of freedom. He said, “Movement in the exhaust pipes created

this...”

There remains so much to be said!  Don’t take it from me.  Prose cannot describe Installation.  Get a copy for yourself, now!

Installation can be purchased from Tarpaulin Sky Press

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(Photo by Martin Bauman)

Breath

 by David Beckman

Beware this new import from the East -- yoga. Suspect celestial and/or bizarre influences coming into play and inducing never-ending hibernation

                                                -- attribution tk (circa 1863)

On the inhale see atoms cascade from

Mercury’s moons. Attain full backward

arch to flower the heart. On downward

dog feel sunspots kiss and planets spin.

In raised palms cup the heat that firms

cell walls, warms dark matter and

loosens galaxies. In sun salutation reach

for Ursa Minor, prompting the spine

erect. Come lunging twist, hear knees

speak in tongues and watch the floor

recede, a damask carpet seeking orbit. In

lotus pose open birth canal lilywide

stretching you a body length past your

birth and one exhale from your demise.

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View More of Ed Coletti's Paintings at Flicker 


Comment or Read Comments Here on any of the above or below. If you do not have a Google account, log in under "Name/URL," (it's easy). Just the name (don't worry about the URL). Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net, and I can post it.