Jennifer Martenson
Unsound
Burning Deck
2010
64 pages
Paperback
$14


There's a certain distance in this book created by the consistent interest in structures. Sections and poems carry titles such as "Contact Sheet" and "Xq28" and "Template" and "The Structure of Detachment" and "Without a System of Movement". Martenson's eye is on getting at the architecture first, and through this, then, the reasoning seems to show, the contents will come. Which seems to be the case. There is scientific inquiry here, yet mixed with intimate urgency, which begets a keen sense of the fragility of assumptions and love. "Precarious," is a word used in the pieces more than once. Her "A Priori" is, I think, one of the finer examples of threaded texts/voices/fonts. Notably, the interweaving syntaxes continue to still be sensible in the singular: this is usually not the case. There is care here, like this, throughout. These poems, long afterward, intriguingly linger.

Anne Boyer
The Two-Thousands, a history of the future in advance of itself
Scribd
2010
61 pages
pdf document
Free



The Two-Thousands is a document of digital, imaginative, and fractal illuminations, consistently struck though with a poignant and humorously dry, self-critical wit. The humor, however, doesn’t, as it often does, dismiss what it observes, but is a pervasive layer upon the several layers of this highly quotable work. Mostly constructed of 100-word paragraphs, more or less, these give way to a three-act, riotous play, “Das Kapital,” and emotionally and socially aware poems under the title, “Terminal Athens.” Boyer’s tremendous imagination is never severed from the world at large, however, the world of the poor and the raped, and nor is it given to that very trap of easy pronouncements, forgetting the incalculable ranges of human illogic. “Just let me belong to Art, not History,” she says within, which is not a lost dream but a real possibility. This is a vital, ambitious, and forgiving, electric text.

Andrew Joron
Trance Archive—New and Selected Poems
City Lights
2010
120 pages
Paperback
$14.95



I heard Joron in Oakland just a few days ago, during which he read two longer pieces, one of which, a portion of, is included in this book. He also played the wavering theremin with his band, Free Rein. Trance Archive is a collection of his work, spanning over twenty years—from Force Fields forward. As with Celan, with whom he visits within, the writing moves, over time, into a mystically crystalline intensity. The most recent work is playful, but not stupidly so, and yet not overly serious either. It is of the shifts of single phonemes, and the release of these, that set the poem on its way. In just the fourth month of this new year, I can absolutely guarantee that this will be one of the most cherished books, most agile of lyric wonders, by the end of it.

Ange Mlinko
Shoulder Season
Coffee House Press
2010
82 pages
Paperback
$16


Mlinko has an ear for language, and an interest in form, and condensed diction, so many of these poems are tightly controlled. The eye is directed on external matters often, which reflect/refract allusions to writerly interests, or resemble the curious mind of a librarian. Sometimes this movement of elevating/enlivening the material with encyclopedic data seems of a piece, and sometimes it seems lacquered on, or the poem feels like a mere retelling of the facts. The ambitious streak and love for relatively unused words, and her ability to form them into interesting sentences, is a remarkable achievement. I don't mean to dismiss this--she has an obvious and admirable skill. I did wish the world would be a bit muddier, though, a bit clumsier, grittier, with more unknowable accident evident in the narratives. But this is to do with me. I have always been interested in the mistakes, the thing out of place which is in its place, the derailing distraction in the beautiful museum.

Sarah O'Brien
Catch Light
Coffee House Press
2009
116 pages
Paperback
$16


I do not have time these days to write full-on reviews of poetry, and nor was I going to write a word about O'Brien's book. I read the book sometime late last year, and I have moved on to other projects, other books, other things. However, out of nowhere, this book continues to call itself up in my memory. At the time of the reading, I felt the book's metaphor field was efficient but perhaps too narrow--light, in all of its capacities. I also felt there was too much of a Cole Swensen presence in it, with whom O'Brien studied at Iowa. However, there is a kind of considerate culling, and an otherworldiness, a looseness of frequencies, that is very appealing. O'Brien has a hovering touch, a light grace, yet the plots have sparked arcs. A serious arena.