| Japan | ||
| by Maxine Chernoff | ||
| 48 pages | ISBN 0-939691-01-9 | $6.00 |
Twenty-six 27-line poems by the author of the acclaimed collection of stories,
Bop, of which Francine Prose has written, "[Chernoff] can inspire us
with the awe we feel when a magician whisks a tablecloth away without
disturbing any dishes." Arranged alphabetically by title ("Amble," "Black,"
"Carom," "Deuce," "Earth," "Feint..."), these poems unravel not only what we
know but how we "Think": "Soon a tangle/ a handle/ comb/ calmly aluminum/ of
letter S/ a sign." Roland Barthes, who did not know this book, seems to have
been looking forward to Chernoff's verbal and mental sleights of hand when he
writes, "If I want to imagine a fictive nation, I can give it an invented name,
treat it declaratively as a novelistic object... so as to compromise no real
country by my fantasy (though it is then that fantasy itself I compromise by
the signs of literature), isolate somewhere in the world (faraway) a
certain number of features..., and out of these features deliberately form a
system. It is this system which I shall call: Japan."
return to Avenue B
"Syllable by syllable, vigorous aural and resolutely abstract. [Chernoff's]
strings of words create L=A=N=G= U=A=G=E poetry of the most radical sort.
There is not an iota
of ingenuousness to be seen anywhere."
"Maxine Chernoff explores a linguistic world of cuts and connections, of
continual action. Japan, like its ancient art of orgami, is presented here as
words upon the page, each folding in upon another to create startlingly new and
visual patterns.... Her world is one of wonder, and enormous beauty."