REVIEW OF DEATH POEMS IN THE POTOMAC
July 2007 - BOOK REVIEW by Mark Spitzer
"Death Poems"
by Che Elias
Six Gallery Press, Pittsburgh
ISBN 0977624218
GRONK THE NEW AMERICAN SYMBOLISM! Whereas the concepts of Symbolism and Surrealism both incorporate visceral dreamlike qualities and place words together that hardly ever share a seat on the bus, the difference between Symbolism (as characterized by the illuminations of Arthur Rimbaud) and Surrealism (as characterized by the welding work of André Breton) lays mainly in intention. Whereas Surrealism (which was born from Symbolism) advocates a consciousness of the Unconscious via Sigmund Freud, Symbolism requires less prerequisites to sense what the poet is saying. Plus, since Surrealism is fueled by spontaneity and goes out of its way to stress an extreme disorientation of disparate realities, the result is basically image-driven for Surrealism, and sensory-driven for Symbolism—which is why the latter is associated with Romanticism.
Of course, all this happened back in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then spread to other places—which is why we now have "American Surrealism." The idea of American Symbolism, however, hasn't been recognized yet—because we don't have many artists in this country who strive for unique emotional content that's specific to an individual rather than the rest of the world. Meaning it takes a secret language with flashes of the disguised highly personal to express the indefinite metaphors which symbolize Symbolism.
Though redolent of a naked lunch, secret language permeates as in the verse of Jean Genet, whose personal elusive symbolism befuddles the experts even today. There are curious fish streaming through this labyrinth, some dolphins and weird birds, and the word "by" is always a farewell.
Gronk?
But lo, Che Elias levitates nocturnally in the Sky of this New Continent—with his latest book Death Poems, a collection of spleenscenes seen through the last electrical synap-crackle-pops in a hanged man's vast rhapsody. One can't be sure, though; all we know is what we feel in the underbelly of the content and the overbelly of the text—which is as unorthodox as the recent classic elements of Symbolism itself.
Formwise, here is a book with no page numbers or proper punctuation. In fact, Elias has invented a nouveau type of segue somewhere betwixt a period and ellipse .. Meanwhile, the font is huge & dark w/ urgency like the final thoughts of a broken poet breaking with broken poetry in his inner earway .. while flashing back on a fleeting past in a timeless present tense & waiting for his neck to snap as waves of lacking oxygen wash across a lucid beach.
Though redolent of a naked lunch, secret language permeates as in the verse of Jean Genet, whose personal elusive symbolism befuddles the experts even today. There are curious fish streaming through this labyrinth, some dolphins and weird birds, and the word "by" is always a farewell. But that's not the only Genet-like quality running through this lyricness .. the cummy content squeaks of the squirts in a seminal dance, avec cunt and young boys and buggery too, with the pendulum arcing from Mucho Disturbing Empathy to Salivation Celebration.
This epic stream-of-unconsciousness undulates with innovation. American verse is hardly ever so Frenchly spirited in Le Pre-Dada as this mix be:
So Lautréamont, welcome back, and thanks for sparing us the gore this time. It's greater to feel than visualize, but sweet to do both at the same time. Meanwhile, Six Gallery's got a good thing going on. With all its Tasmanian Massmanians and obscuras de Kane X. Fancher et al., a New Am Symbolism now larvates forth somewhere east of Wheeling—with Che Elias at the core, supergluing Doodly Doo!
"Death Poems"
by Che Elias
Six Gallery Press, Pittsburgh
ISBN 0977624218
GRONK THE NEW AMERICAN SYMBOLISM! Whereas the concepts of Symbolism and Surrealism both incorporate visceral dreamlike qualities and place words together that hardly ever share a seat on the bus, the difference between Symbolism (as characterized by the illuminations of Arthur Rimbaud) and Surrealism (as characterized by the welding work of André Breton) lays mainly in intention. Whereas Surrealism (which was born from Symbolism) advocates a consciousness of the Unconscious via Sigmund Freud, Symbolism requires less prerequisites to sense what the poet is saying. Plus, since Surrealism is fueled by spontaneity and goes out of its way to stress an extreme disorientation of disparate realities, the result is basically image-driven for Surrealism, and sensory-driven for Symbolism—which is why the latter is associated with Romanticism.
Of course, all this happened back in France during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, then spread to other places—which is why we now have "American Surrealism." The idea of American Symbolism, however, hasn't been recognized yet—because we don't have many artists in this country who strive for unique emotional content that's specific to an individual rather than the rest of the world. Meaning it takes a secret language with flashes of the disguised highly personal to express the indefinite metaphors which symbolize Symbolism.
Though redolent of a naked lunch, secret language permeates as in the verse of Jean Genet, whose personal elusive symbolism befuddles the experts even today. There are curious fish streaming through this labyrinth, some dolphins and weird birds, and the word "by" is always a farewell.
Gronk?
But lo, Che Elias levitates nocturnally in the Sky of this New Continent—with his latest book Death Poems, a collection of spleenscenes seen through the last electrical synap-crackle-pops in a hanged man's vast rhapsody. One can't be sure, though; all we know is what we feel in the underbelly of the content and the overbelly of the text—which is as unorthodox as the recent classic elements of Symbolism itself.
Formwise, here is a book with no page numbers or proper punctuation. In fact, Elias has invented a nouveau type of segue somewhere betwixt a period and ellipse .. Meanwhile, the font is huge & dark w/ urgency like the final thoughts of a broken poet breaking with broken poetry in his inner earway .. while flashing back on a fleeting past in a timeless present tense & waiting for his neck to snap as waves of lacking oxygen wash across a lucid beach.
Though redolent of a naked lunch, secret language permeates as in the verse of Jean Genet, whose personal elusive symbolism befuddles the experts even today. There are curious fish streaming through this labyrinth, some dolphins and weird birds, and the word "by" is always a farewell. But that's not the only Genet-like quality running through this lyricness .. the cummy content squeaks of the squirts in a seminal dance, avec cunt and young boys and buggery too, with the pendulum arcing from Mucho Disturbing Empathy to Salivation Celebration.
This epic stream-of-unconsciousness undulates with innovation. American verse is hardly ever so Frenchly spirited in Le Pre-Dada as this mix be:
So Lautréamont, welcome back, and thanks for sparing us the gore this time. It's greater to feel than visualize, but sweet to do both at the same time. Meanwhile, Six Gallery's got a good thing going on. With all its Tasmanian Massmanians and obscuras de Kane X. Fancher et al., a New Am Symbolism now larvates forth somewhere east of Wheeling—with Che Elias at the core, supergluing Doodly Doo!
posted by Che Elias at 11:39 AM
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