Small Press Review, Volume 35, Numbers 11/12, November/December 2003

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Public Cube
John M. Bennett
8 pp; 2003; Pa
Luna Bisonte Press, 137 Leland Avenue,
Columbus OH 43214. $5.

I've always been strongly attracted to minimalist poems. Probably my best-known (and perhaps best) essay, "Mnmlst Poetry: Unacclaimed But Flourishing," discusses such poems in detail. (It can be found at Karl Young's Light & Dust website: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/grumman/egrumn.htm.) Many of my own poems are minimalist, as well--and my favorite poem of all-time is Aram Saroyan's extremely minimalist pwoermd, "lighght." I've never had much luck persuading those not as automatically blown away by the best of such poems that they ought to be, however. My theory is that to appreciate a minimalist poem, you have to be seriously angered by their illogic--and then, almost at once, able to grasp, intellectually and hormonally, their concealed logic. The anger provides motivation and energy, and increases the happiness of the relief one feels upon "solving" the poem--if carried out quickly enough. Added to this is the satisfaction whatever the poem conveys gives you, once rendered coherent (or sufficiently coherent). So you have to be susceptible to the charms of poetry, too.

If my theory is right, you have to be fairly annoyed by the wilful misspelling of "lighght" when you first see it to have much chance of significantly appreciating it. Then, almost at once, you must recognize (with varying degrees of consciousness) that the extra letters are silent, so the word is unchanged by them and acts in its re-spelling as a brilliantly appropriate metaphor for the silent expansiveness of light. The result should be a joy in having solved something combined with a fresh, vivid experience of light. (Note: the more on has been exposed to similar poems, the more likely one will get this one. A good place to start are haiku. They are the protoype of short poems dependent on a reader's quickly seeing/feeling a connection between images not immediately apparent.)

Hey, guess what? This is beginning to be An Important Essay! Or I'm in my manic zone for the first time in months. I know I'm not saying anything I haven't said five or more times before in various places, but I think I may have just said it about as well as I'm capable of. In any case, it all relates to minimalist poet Marton Koppany's terrific new collection of poetry sequences, Investigations, choicely packaged by Jesse Glass's Ahadada press (no stapled in the corner hand-out, this).

The book's exactly apropos epigraph is from Isidore Ducasse: "The phenomenon passes, I seek the laws." Each of its poems takes place in a black-bordered rectangle. Nothing could be more formal and tidy. Nor loopier than what is investigated, which is not merely minimalist but (most of the time) wacko. For instance, just the words, or word, in cursive writing, "allofasuddenthesame." Bern Porter is one obvious precursor of this kind of thing, as are many of the earlier Dadaists. But Koppany has gone at least an important step beyond any of his influences, I think, for his works are more reflective, less arbitrary than theirs. They are also sequential, so that each frame of a given work draws from and enriches the other frames--and frames of other poems in the book.

The book's very first sequence, "Titles," is my favorite, probably because I find a lyricism in it that is less apparent in the rest of the book, which tilts, I think, toward a kind of epigrammicry. The three rectangles of "Titles" are black. In the first, dominating the top half of the rectangle, is a torn scrap of paper with the word, "CATEGORY" in its upper lefthand corner. It looks like the prow of a ship. A mast-like vertical line sticks up out of the "ship." A carefully cut-out rectangle substantially smaller than the "ship" is near the lower righthand corner of the work. In it, in smaller capitals than the ones in the "ship," are the words, "STILL LIFE."

First reaction? Anger at such obscurity, perhaps--though my anger, if any, was short, for I immediately connected to the Klee-like simplicity of the design--especially in a book supposed to contain poems, poems being verbal. But was the work anything beyond a mildly ingratiating design? Perhaps because I'm so wrapped up in literary taxonomizing, I found it to be a wonderful . . . investigation of "categorization." Something about the size of the ship, "CATEGORY," compared with the rectangle, "STILL LIFE," got to me. Generality overwhelming the particular? But receding from it, having less and less contact with it--finally, in fact, to leave the still life all by itself, so in the final analysis irrelevant to it?

On the other hand, the ship was the life-containing object--non-geometric, mobile, its edges irregular. Conclusion: you got me. But what the poem unloads, however incomplete an expression of categorization and whatever else it's about, coheres sufficiantly, for me. Incompleteness and contradictoriness are part of it.

Each of the other two frames of "Titles" consists of shiplike element with a mast and a second element that jar and harmonize with the objects in the first frame. I won't say more about the sequence--or the book, just provide one more excerpt, which illustrates the kind of piece most typical of Investigations. It's from "Valuable Coupons." Like the pieces in "Titles," its field (which is white) contains just two elements, in this case a price from a newspaper ad, "$2.00 off," midway in the rectangle, and "I am using a reduced language" neatly typed nare the bottom. That should make you at least smile.

A month or two after I got my copy of Koppany's book, I got the three latest offerings Of John M. Bennett's Luna Bisonte press. I thought I might mention one or two of them here, so--just before writing the above--I looked them over. One of them, Public Cube, I at once noticed, consisted of minimalist poems in framed cut-outs from printed matter, with words of Bennett's. I can't swear Bennett was strongly influenced by Koppany but I am sure he was because: (1) I know he got a copy of Koppany's book around the time he seems to have written the poems in his new book; (2) I know he greatly likes Koppany's work; (3) I know him to be as influenceable as Shakespeare was; (4) his new poems have much in common with Koppany's and (5) I myself immediately wanted to do frames poems like Koppany's after seeing them (but am not as unlazy as Bennett, so haven't yet)--in other words, Koppany's poems seem very likely to inspire other poets who do similar things to use his devices.

Against this, it is quite possible that Bennett was not influenced by Koppany's work, for Bennett has previously done poems not too different from them, and both poets have been influenced by Porter and other minimalist poets. Moreover, there are big differences in style between Investigations and Public Cube. But the latter does seem to me exactly the kind of book Bennett might have done after seeing Koppany's book. All of which I report to show how the best poets inter-work (even if Bennett was working in parallel with Koppany rather than after him).

I'm already two hundred words over what I consider the proper size of my column, but I don't want to end without saying a little more about Bennett's book, so will provide a quick take on its title (and cover) piece. Its border is red--on a very white cover. (The book's pages are a lighter shade of red.) Across most of its middle is the word, "sprawl," in Bennett's inimitable sub-literate scrawl. I first read this as "growl," which fits perfectly (and proves the value of multi-interpretably "bad" handwriting). A cut-out of "Public" and a cut-out of "Cube" slantingly intersect with "sprawl," one above, one below its "s." Its effectiveness as a design quickly mitigates its verbal obscurity, for me, allowing time to see/feel urban geometry versus life (the former perhaps opening to emit the latter--or being shaken by it), hear the bigcity click and bawl of "public" and "cube," and reflect on how that which is public might be not a mere square but a cube. (Bennett's collection ends, I might add, with a poem whose text is, "kept plank," if that helps, any.)