Jacket 19 — October 2002 | # 19 Contents | Homepage | Catalog | |
Ethan Paquin reviews
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Poetry, wrote Stan Brakhage, ‘rummag[es] the left hemisphere for only that language which will suffice rhythmically/texturally in orchestral support of the song schema.’ The World, according to Maxine Chernoff — a master rummager in stocking her linguistic symphony full of instruments that will convey her unique songs — is of and about nothing but music. The book’s eponymous, central poem (a long poem, it comprises one of the book’s four sections) is a rambling jazz suite of sorts, and typifies the sonic and syntactical quirkiness for which Chernoff is known and celebrated: Numbers Precambrian
If ‘World’ is part be-bop, part hip-hop in its breaks and intonations and rhythms, the other three sections of the book form the remainder of her sound collage: in ‘Part One,’ minute and hushed lyrics recall quiet piano tinkling; ‘Part Three’ recalls the Beat sensibility of the title poem, and each poem is introduced with a short koan or maxim; and ‘Part Four’ consists of several prosaic, script-like ‘poems’ in which two characters discuss various subjects including sex, suicide, and parenting — here, the music of human dialogue. Indeed, World, which chronicles Chernoff’s poetry writing over the past ten years, is an eclectic setlist, most every poem masterful in creating aural interest with every turn of the line, every clever juxtaposition of dissonant words, every enjambment that looks all wrong yet sounds utterly right. Chernoff’s poetry is not about the science of prosody, it is about nothing but music; yet nowhere else is a jazz-like trill or flourish — the epitome of all that is spontaneous, unrehearsed — so precise. — [Dogs] have those sad brown eyes.
Backlit by pathos and absurdity, these comedic scenes are remarkable for their transcendence of comedy. Not merely give-and-take, he-said/she-said, Abbott and Costello stand-up routines, Chernoff’s ‘script-poems’ start fast and end even faster, more energetically. They are exercises in pure rhythm, in how to generate and accrete energy — by writing economically, stripping a dialogue to its most essential elements, and removing all distractions so that one may focus intently on the speakers as if they were engaged in the world’s final debate. The only question is, ‘Which world?’ Over the last decade, Chernoff has succeeded in building her own — complete with sparse compositions, satisfying music, wit and cleverness, and a recognizable yet quirky population — driven by, as is hinted in the book’s first poem, an ‘ideology of rapture.’ We should all be so captivated. |
Jacket 19 — October 2002
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