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Prose Poetry Slip-Streaming Away
Dec. 21st, 2024 11:00 amWiloch, Thomas, 2006, Screaming in Code, Naked Snake Press, 6 Rain Tree Lane, Pawleys Island, SC 29585, softcover, perfect bound, 56 pages. Artwork by Thomas Wiloch and Donna Taylor Burgess.
This is a very pretty chapbook: lots of illustrations, nice cover stock with lots of color; too bad it doesn't have an ISBN and the price is not listed in the book. However, there is a website: www.nakedsnakepress.com (the URL is not listed in the book either). Presumably, all is made clear at the website.
This is a book of prose poems that warns the reader against overdoses of its powerful medicine. There is always a risk when one indulges in hyperbole. The best of these stories are like western koans, but some are just not that profound.
Here are some snippets. I don't really want to quote more, because the individual prose poems, which total 34 in number, are generally shorter than half a page. "Tiny white skulls" can be our friends. "You can do anything you want with tiny white skulls." "Tell me I'm wrong": "the human body is composed primarily of empty space." "The locomotive museum" from which the locomotives escaped one day, "some rearing up like great wild horses... and still others as giddy as children."
On the one hand, some of the stuff was just silly, and not on purpose. In "the trunks" the protagonist opens a trunk in order to start packing for a trip, only to find a smaller trunk inside. He opens that trunk and, you can guess the rest. But here's my question. Why did he keep on opening trunks when they got so small he needed a microscope to see them? Why not just pack all of the smaller trunks inside the next larger one, and take the biggest, now empty, on the trip? Sure, there's a mystery to be solved, but you're going to skip a trip to Europe because of it?!
On the other hand, I like the idea of the man who lives in a box. It turns out he lives in a box so large that the entire universe fits inside. If the box is this big does it matter? I think it does.
On the gripping hand, this might be a good book to have on the bedside table for those mornings when you wake up two hours early and can't go back to sleep. You might learn something useful reading a couple of these.
This is a very pretty chapbook: lots of illustrations, nice cover stock with lots of color; too bad it doesn't have an ISBN and the price is not listed in the book. However, there is a website: www.nakedsnakepress.com (the URL is not listed in the book either). Presumably, all is made clear at the website.
This is a book of prose poems that warns the reader against overdoses of its powerful medicine. There is always a risk when one indulges in hyperbole. The best of these stories are like western koans, but some are just not that profound.
Here are some snippets. I don't really want to quote more, because the individual prose poems, which total 34 in number, are generally shorter than half a page. "Tiny white skulls" can be our friends. "You can do anything you want with tiny white skulls." "Tell me I'm wrong": "the human body is composed primarily of empty space." "The locomotive museum" from which the locomotives escaped one day, "some rearing up like great wild horses... and still others as giddy as children."
On the one hand, some of the stuff was just silly, and not on purpose. In "the trunks" the protagonist opens a trunk in order to start packing for a trip, only to find a smaller trunk inside. He opens that trunk and, you can guess the rest. But here's my question. Why did he keep on opening trunks when they got so small he needed a microscope to see them? Why not just pack all of the smaller trunks inside the next larger one, and take the biggest, now empty, on the trip? Sure, there's a mystery to be solved, but you're going to skip a trip to Europe because of it?!
On the other hand, I like the idea of the man who lives in a box. It turns out he lives in a box so large that the entire universe fits inside. If the box is this big does it matter? I think it does.
On the gripping hand, this might be a good book to have on the bedside table for those mornings when you wake up two hours early and can't go back to sleep. You might learn something useful reading a couple of these.
