September 30, 2007

Valerie Coulton, Passing World Pictures (Apogee, 2003). 54 pages of non-paginated poetry. $12.95.

Among the books I bought at Laurie's used bookshop in the Nicolette Mall area of Minneapolis over the weekend. The bookstore has a special shelf for "hyper-modern" poetry (as they called it) next to the staircase downward to whichever sections don't merit a top floor designation. Literature (that is fiction, poetry [ie. poetry of the Pre-Moderns & Moderns], and drama) are all treated equally alpha by author last name on the entry-ground floor.

I like going to this bookstore because I end up buying books that go against my usual reading proclivities.

Bought:

Arun Kolatkar, Jejuri
Morri Creech, Field Knowledge
&
Valerie Coulton, Passing World Pictures

Of Valerie Coulton's book: I read it in a sitting. It can be read quickly like that. Then I re-read it in the same setting; I was that engaged. There are 203 appropriated lines drawn from a single text on Japanese culture meant for a foreign audience to her 92 original lines.

There is the poetic concern of appropriation as source and form to a poem in the post-poem jaded era. Coulton acknowledges such in the front & end matter of the book by listing the source material twice, as well as italicizing borrowed text throughout. She clearly wants to point readers to the source, a material beyond the reach of the casual reader: We Japanese the 1934 and 1937 editions.

Despite the pointing, the text is very much her own, and it's a beautiful read: cut, spliced, & transitioned to make a poetic argument:

inkstones rubbed
between her sleep

oarsmen push
wave's body

parts are numbered
stored away

______

Someone please remind me of the html to properly indent text lines. These couplet lines are cascaded left to right in the text.