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Kimberly Lyons

Auteur de Abracadabra

4+ oeuvres 21 utilisateurs 2 critiques

Œuvres de Kimberly Lyons

Abracadabra (2000) 12 exemplaires
Saline (2005) 6 exemplaires
The Practice of Residue (2012) 2 exemplaires
Phototherapique 1 exemplaire

Oeuvres associées

The Best American Poetry 2023 (The Best American Poetry series) (2023) — Contributeur — 19 exemplaires

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I had the pleasure of meeting Kimberly Lyons at the publisher of this bk's home in NYC. I was interviewing people who knew Franz Kamin, who died last yr, & she was one of the interviewees. 1st off, I like the cover by Tony Fitzpatrick very much. It reminds me of some of the artwork in the fantastic Taschen edition of Alexander Roob's "Alchemy & Mysticism". The cover exudes cosmology, knowledge, vision, & good humor.

"Abracadabra" is, of course, the most common word associated w/ magic spells. Wave a magic wand, say "Abracadabra" & the desired magical change happens. In the poem entitled "Object Relations" Lyons writes:

"This summer I don't remember any paintings
did I just read the words "dry torches" or
think it
that seems to summarize the quandary"

& then, later in "'Tude" she writes:

"Say "party hat," or "red couch," "lime
green popsickle," and "taxi." "Umbrella
tree," "indigo," "come," and "promise.""

These might not seem to be incantatory words, but I like thinking of them that way. Some of those of us preoccupied w/ the power(s) of language spend time wondering whether attaching words to things simultaneously creates them in particular ways that may escape immediate notice. A person gets sad when there's a minimum of light for a long time? They have "S.A.D.", "Seasonal Affective Disorder" &, Abracadabra!, they now have a mental illness where they might've been previously just responding to a lack of a vitamin from the sun or an instinct for hibernation. But I digress.

I had trouble finding an entry point into these poems until I just took them as description - but a description in wch each sentence accumulates differently than they typically might in discursive paragraphs. A sentence describes something, the following sentence describes something else, the next something else again - & so on. Each sentence is quite full in & of itself & the sentences together, instead of focusing on details of a specified whole, refer to disparate details that the reader combines into an amorphous worldview. Take this, eg:

"
The Concise History of Painting

The cones and cubes of an ideal town
rise across the lake
of brown rumpled water
perfumed by egrets
and moths. And I fell asleep
briefly yesterday by the file cabinet
and had a dream, like a spasm.
Masses of clouds move sternly over
the ocean.
I suck on my violet duck.
I hit my spoon with the floor.
Call out to the
shadow of a saint
who has fallen under his horse.
"

The conceptual distance between each of these sentences is ambiguous. The 1st sentence cd be a description of a painting. The 2nd, b/c it describes an experience that "I" had may be autobiographical or not. The title implies possible references to paintings, the "I" implies 1st person - but they cd be both or neither. The sentences might form a narrative or they might be describing events far removed in time & place. As Jordan Davis' review on the back cover reads: "it is the unmoving objects that do the striking when there's a collision".
… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
tENTATIVELY | Apr 3, 2022 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
4
Aussi par
1
Membres
21
Popularité
#570,576
Évaluation
½ 3.7
Critiques
2
ISBN
3