Artificial Heart, by Peter Gizzi, Burning Deck, Providence,
1998, 93 pages, $10.00 paper.



Peter Gizzi's Artificial Heart is much concerned with frames,
outlines, and the absences caused by their dissolution -- the
emptying out of pre-conceived ideas and content -- "as sober jets
empty the sky" (From a Field Glass).  "Farther off / pedestrians
make parallel lines and collapse / into distance" ("New Picnic
Time") -- what's being noticed/noted here is that instant ("zero
hour") when "an earth unwrites itself" and we become unsure of
our perceptions, as "local color bleeds into the river" ("Mourning &
Materiality").


But there's no real despair in this prospect, and indeed, if there is a
dominant emotional tone in these accomplished poems, it's one of
jauntiness -- Gizzi tracks through the hollows, as it were, for scraps
(traces, echoes) of previous poetries (from the New Testament to
David Byrne) that he can salvage to compose new songs. There are
occasional hints at what might lie "beyond this image decomposing:
desire / . . . uncanny earth. A funny thing to feel" ("New Picnic
Time") but no real images or descriptions offered -- instead, there's
an insistent distrust of prior representation, with the emphasis
squarely on what's left behind when "The artifact in time fades / and
we are left with a blank slate." ("Another Day on the Pilgrimage")
The "repair" of such a condition is merely the activity of "working
the long pencil / until groove become grove" ("Utopian
Parkway").


Gizzi has also edited, this year, The House That Jack Built,
a collection of Jack Spicer's lectures, and Spicer's concern for the
invisible is much in evidence here. Indeed, the best gloss of these
poems might be a curious bootleg edition of After Lorca,
which shows the poet on the cover relaxing on an outdoor deck,
and then, on the next page, cuts him out of the scene, with only the
outline of his presence left behind.


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Joe Safdie's latest manuscript is The Story of O, a re-examination of
the Orpheus myth. He lives and teaches in Seattle.