Novel Pictorial Noise (National Poetry Series)
Starred Review.The prolific Gordon here takes his cues from Ashbery&mdash;who picked this collection for the National Poetry Series&mdash;but also from poets ranging from Rilke to Peter Gizzi. In alternating pages of prose and spare verse lines, he plays freely in the realm between theory and lyric: Sculpture seeks articulation of the air around it. Thus, a heron thrusting overhead mutes modernism. Each of the 50 one-paragraph prose poems starts with a proposition and then attempts to both follow through on its initial lunge and also force the reader off the most obvious trails of thought, usually by tossing in a few surprises: an Ajax bottle, Alice Neel, a dab of wisteria and a strip of duct tape make appearances in two lines of one poem. Gordon closes each poem with an artfully clumsy rhyming couplet&mdash;One packs in what one can, as the real point of art is the subtle reiteration of the is, ain't it? The way I see it, we're all partially tainted&mdash;alternately lending irony and vulnerability. While this is a difficult book steeped in canonical and postmodern poetic traditions&mdash;meaning it won't appeal to everyone&mdash;it's packed with thrills and discoveries that might engender some discussion.(Sept.)Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.