a princess magic
presto spell
Lisa
Jarnot. Solid Objects, $16 US hardcover (32p) ISBN 978-0-9844142-7-7
Into the eve of a picnic of trees of the strawberry rugulet rabbit tyrone
into a glazed economic disturbance
caused by the rain most dramatic and strange
small
whole moon in the sky fishlike in
semblance
as damp as an amphibranch the anthony braxton gland of ant launch
From
New York poet Lisa Jarnot comes the exquisitely-designed hardcover
book/chapbook a princess magic presto
spell (2014), sprinkled throughout with stunning artwork by Emilie Clark.
Constructed as a sequence of three poem-parts—“Amedellin Cooperative Nosegay,” “A Boa Constrictor” and “Every
Body’s Bacon”—Jarnot’s small collection is a sequence of expansive
collage-works, thick with names, references, mysteries, sound and images that
collect, collide and mash into an intricate and complicated rush of densely-packed
lyric. As she writes: “this state sponsored car alarm, my lost mason jar,
vivian rose champion’s delicate victorian ankles, the / lonely bird, autumnal
burnings, duncan’s, cold and clear, // while slyly coffee hangs / outside below
a / wall of snow[.]” Composed in three sections, one suspects this might be but
the opening sections of a far larger work, or could simply be what it seems: a three-part
self-contained piece that includes almost everything.
tenemos par chinches
helen mirren naked running from what
Jarnot’s
a princess magic presto spell blends
collage and the list to create a poem aware of large moments, from “trapped
chilean miners in a / spectacularly disappointing universe,” or keeping to
small, writing on “bodega dust,” and:
this plantain a
modest garden, kate mcgarrigle also, three guinea hens, very linty sunrise,
four latin
grannies and
domenica with a new calendar, lonely nina simone, a very gray day, the case of
the
missing stamps,
a foot massagenist, and the creation of earls
leap over a
large rock
splendored
with april moss
Jarnot
has utilized the collage/accumulation in her work before, such as in the “Sea
Lyrics” section of her Ring of Fire
(Zoland Books, 2001/Salt Publishing, 2003), and her dozen or so books and
chapbooks are rich with a variety of formal experimentation and play, including
utilizing the sonnet, the lyric sentence and the prose poem, among others. Structurally,
the flow of a princess magic presto spell
goes back and forth between the deluge and the extremely small, winding and
weaving akin to the utanikki, a Japanese-hybrid form utilized in the past by
Canadian poets bpNichol and Fred Wah, blending haiku-like smallness with a more
expansive lyric. Even the title could suggest an idea of translation and
Japanese form, as a princess magic presto
spell suggests what a Japanese title might translate literally (and poorly)
into English, with the result being more confusion than explanation. The
accumulation of the poem also leads one to suspect that the piece is complete
only in as much as it holds everything she has placed within it, and could hold
far more, if she wished. This is very much a book of play and movement, “this
debauched kinesthesia / that big dream porn book,” exploring a language space
where everything meets and somehow connects to everything else. (June 2014)
Purchase a
princess magic presto spell HERE.
Reviewer
bio: Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious
capital city, rob mclennan
currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly thirty trade books of poetry,
fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, and was
longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. His most recent titles include notes
and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014) and The Uncertainty
Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014). He regularly posts reviews,
essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
