You Will Never Understand

I.  BEN MIROV IS MOVING THROUGH YOU. THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM.

Ben Mirov is a mirror placed roughly at chest height. Ben Mirov cuts a hole in the sunshine layer and disappears momentarily at times. Do not be alarmed is what Ben Mirov says to you. Ben Mirov then becomes a second mirror, a highly polished reflective window, which Ben Mirov affixes to the tops of his shoes, which I am assuming for the purposes of this text, are probably brown and pleasantly relief-map textured — worn in; not shabby or overly distressed.

SIDE NOTE (mine):
it is sometimes necessary
for Ben Mirov to look down
in order to see up.

When the speaker of Ben Mirov — a human head hologram made of snow that is also Ben Mirov — talks, both of his mirrors become electroacoustic transducers, oscillating and modulating, their operator manipulating phase and static as discretely separate instruments so as to obscure the nature and direction of sound itself, effectively rendering it difficult to determine which Ben Mirov the momentarily stunned viewer is experiencing at any given time.

SIDE NOTE (mine):
it is sometimes necessary
for Ben Mirov to look up
in order to see down.
this is not a problem for Ben
Mirov. in short, this is not a problem.

TEXT UNIT EXAMPLE (a)

an excerpt from Light from Dead Stars Doesn’t Lie (p. 19)
I dream all of my friends at once
are Amy. Amy injects me with a vial
of Joseph Conrad. She says it will help me travel
the crooked line to the point where I do not exist
on Earth. All of my friends exist on earth
and if you punch their face for long enough
it will become a common type of gem.

As the speaker of Ben Mirov continues, Ben Mirov wishes more for his friends, and perhaps more from himself. Ben Mirov is deconstructing/rebuilding Ben Mirov again. The speaker views his ever-mutable world from inside of Ben Mirov, too insignificant and helpless to save those most cherished by the aforementioned Ben Mirov:

I am trying to tell you about my friends.
The way they have no body or face.
The way they cannot save the Great Barrier Reef
or the people in the cities or anything.
They cannot even save themselves.
They walk slowly into the thunderhead.

TEXT UNIT EXAMPLE (b)

an excerpt from Instructions (p. 70);
wherein the reader is gifted an eyeball)
When you have carried it far enough
give it to the next person you meet.
Or bury it in a pile of shards.
Or smash it on a rock.

III. CONCLUSION: BEN MIROV AS A FORCE CARRIED BETWEEN TWO OPPOSING POLES

Ben Mirov is a complicated cycle of oscillation between existence and its opposite state, consisting equally of both reflective and refractive physical parts. Should the reader happen to glimpse his inner working machinery, it should be noted that said reader should experience no cause for fear. The intricate parts and gears necessary to the movement of Ben Mirov might at times suggest the brutal violence of rigid metal and wire; however, these gears are made of cloud meat, lubricated and drunk with the common blood of ours. It is recommended that the reader allow Ben Mirov to move uniformly through them; to allow both Ben Mirovs passage through the fingers, the mind, and ultimately, the heart.

TEXT UNIT EXAMPLE (c)

an excerpt from Hider Roser (p. 11)
rearranging the letters in horse rider
you get hider roser, which means something
you will never understand

Heather Christle's The Trees The Trees

Last month, Julieanne Smolinksi wrote a sardonic essay about the fight against whimsy, urging women to avoid men who “confuse dating with an opportunity to showcase a series of highly cultivated quirks.” Too often, it seems like people are confusing personality, artistry, and talent with the ability to cultivate and strategize the right quirks. For this same reason, I find it difficult to recommend small press poetry to my friends outside of the small press publishing world. It’s hard to say, “this is beautiful and unpretentious and the quirks are ENCHANTING and not INCREDIBLY ANNOYING.”

I only write this here because I would earnestly call Heather Christle’s poetry “enchanting” (Cathy Park Hong says the same thing in her blurb and I’ve got to say, it’s been too long since I was enchanted by poetry). The whimsy and the quirks are there -- a lot of strange visions and circumstances -- but they never feel like forced posturing. You start to imagine that Heather Christle is the girl you really want to be friends with because she’s just so damn cool. And pretty.

That’s another thing. Christle’s writing is pretty -- really pretty -- and the images are surreal and often sweet, but they are also so vivid and genuine that you almost wish you could be in them. Take, “When the sun went down they kept growing,” below:

Christle dedicated the poem to the poet Amanda Nadelberg, and after I read it I kept thinking how badly I wanted to be friends with both of them. Also note Christle’s spacing and formatting on these poems. The entire book is like that. One building block after another.

Naturally (pun!), trees are mentioned in many of the poems, and throughout the entire collection there’s an undercurrent of physicality and growth -- reacting to it, getting there, wanting not to be there. Perhaps this is why these blocks can be both surreal and real -- she uses those images (sometimes taking you into trees, above them, through their branches) to get down to some accessible experience.

Many of the poems are also funny, when it comes right down to it -- because while they’re pretty they’re also self-aware and sharp, making them feel like a nice dose of real talk. Which, again, makes them completely accessible. Christle never confuses artistry with whimsy. She just makes beautiful things happen. This is the kind of book I would give to my best friend from high school and my new friend who just got a raise at her job.

When’s the last time you found a book of poetry you could say that about?