>>REVIEW
FRACTAL ECONOMIES
derek beaulieu
Talon Press, 93 pp.
Most readers who are familiar with concrete poetry are also familiar with the biggest complaint about it: it’s too big-idea, too intelli-snob wank to have any purpose. Disgruntled readers ask: What’s the point? What’s the meaning?
derek beaulieu’s third book, fractal economies, doesn’t address the question so much as demonstrate ideas: yes, it is intellectual, but it doesn’t have to be read that way. In fact, the book veers into a poetics of visual art – perhaps calling it a "poetics of seeing" is more appropriate.
fractal economies is divided into five sections. The first and last deal with academic hype; the middle three are simply the poems themselves. And perhaps it is easiest to start there, in the broken edges of beaulieu’s poetics.
Section one, "surface," plays most obviously with the fractal form, where letters are cut and spilled about the page. The odd legible words – font sizes, the brand name "Selectum," measurements and a faded but still readable "TAIWAN" – all point towards the composition of the poems more so than any emotional reference.
The second section, "depression," involves blurs and fades, the faint trace of the word "terrorism" as it’s being erased and the poem "a comprehensive force between the cam and the follower," which is a series of diagrams of cam shafts with the Greek letter omega propelling the machinery. The section also includes my favourite poem in the book, "a discourse on paranoia," which shows chromosomal map-like figures. I laughed myself sick.
Finally, "blister" involves the ghostly pressings of those beautiful plastic magnets shaped like letters. Nostalgia and whimsy decorate the trace of these poems. This doesn’t mean that they are about childhood per se, but for me they recall my early days.
"problems in composition" operates as a sort of introduction to the book. But don’t look for answers here. The introductory-style poetry is obscured with prints of bubble-wrap and fragments of other texts, transforming them into a movement towards the reduction of language within the text, rather than an explanation of the language.
For that explanation, you must read the outroduction: "an afterward on after words: notes towards a concrete poetic." Yes, the essay is heavy and technical. But it is also an important work, and one which might clarify a few thoughts on concrete poetry, if you have the appetite for polysyllabic words (which I do). But I need to say: don’t feel that the poetry must escape you if you won’t/can’t read the outroduction. The essay is important, but the accessibility and beauty of the poems themselves are more so.
So what’s the point? What’s the meaning?
Buried within all the intellectual mumbo-jumbo and the high-falutin’ language is a simple idea: concrete poems are what you make of them. And sure, there’s a danger that you won’t see any meaning. But perhaps that’s okay.
Visual artists like Marcel Duchamp had to deal with complaints of intelli-snobbery and grandstanding. Igor Stravinsky caused a riot at his debut of The Rite of Spring in 1913; by 1940, Disney had included the work in Fantasia. Concrete poetics is still young, and still dealing with problems that more "radical" art forms must endure.
fractal economies, however, has the potential to be like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which taps the vein of jazz for many listeners and musicians. Never read a book of concrete poetry before? This might be the one to hook you. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.