Saturday, August 06, 2022

Wichman Cometh by Ben Pease (2011)

Wichman Cometh

Ben Pease

Monk Books

New York City

(c)2011

This is a hybrid twice over. It's 41 pages with a spine, okay, so I technically don't call it a chapbook but the spine has no writing on it so what's the point of that? Dead empty space on a black spine which emphasizes the "tiny sliver of nothing" in black space that I am certain was not a conscious thought of the publisher here but - the book contains, in addition to some interesting language formations and topography has addition visual topography that mirrors and reenforces the words in a playful and almost harmonious way. The subtitle of the book, "Selections from a Blockbuster in Verse", ties the threads together well. And the last line of the last poem does not have a period, suggesting to me at least, that there is not "ending" like a good French film which stops without "concluding". Or, say the ending of the American film "Sideways". The "ending" is what you, the viewer, project it to be; the movie doesn't give it to you. It's satisfying in its unending-ness. 



 

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