Bryce Warnes reviews N.W. Lea's Less Dream (2021) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for N.W. Lea's Less Dream (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

NW Lea | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple-bound, 12 pages | Purchase

Among his work’s themes, Lea has named encounters with the Real. One way he gets there: the double take, the second guess. “Void” opens with a list of struckthrough images, proclaims “I’m putting an end / to these twittering lists,” then finds egress from the world of surfaces via birds in a tree, “little adorable portals.” “You could murder every witless thing / in you. Every wishing thing,” proclaims “Murder Ballad,” flexing a knack for the near-homophonic reaching back to 2006’s light years (above/ground). Lea bends language until hairline cracks appear, letting the light shine through—and he’s been doing so for years. Less Dream is only the latest entry in a singular, numinous body of work.

Bryce Warnes reviews Amanda Earl's a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for Amanda Earl's a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Amanda Earl | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple-bound, 24 pages | Purchase

Even if there are 10 quintillion insects on our planet, it can be easy to overlook them—until they sting, or until someone pins them in a display case. The same goes for the printed word and its components. Amanda Earl won’t let us ignore these ubiquitous swarms, collecting them, arranging them, sometimes dissecting them with a naturalist’s eye for subtle harmonies. “intersects” threatens to overwhelm the margins with a swarm of i’s, until it doesn’t. “the vampire mosquito” puts a stake through V’s axis, while “the demon caterpillar” is hungry hungry for your dreams. And something about the interzonal a/symmetry of “burroughs’ araknid” keeps this reviewer returning to the page. Entomophobes beware.

Bryce Warnes reviews The OceanDweller by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi (trans. Khashayar Mohammadi (2021) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for The OceanDweller by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi (trans. Khashayar Mohammadi) (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, trans. Khashayar Mohammadi

above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple bound, 10 pages | Purchase

Via Khashayar Mohammadi’s translation, Saeed Tavanaee Marvi cruises the strait between Earth and Hell, acacias and tornadoes, Buster Keaton and a swarm of insects. “Pain is the key to the human interior,” we learn in White Poplar; the door opens on a dizzying inner/outer world, where phones both “resemble planets  / giving meaning to long incomprehensible numbers,” and smell of violets (Me, Her, Telephone), where ancient battles break out, and a mysterious vehicle called the OceanCruiser sings, in its “most cordial hymn,” that “we’re born to test our hearts … kiss whomever you love without a word,” (The Deep Wound.) On meaning’s rough seas, The OceanDweller—the first volume of Marvi’s work in English—keeps us precariously, giddily afloat.

Bryce Warnes reviews Jérôme Melançon's Coup (2020) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for Jérôme Melançon's Coup (2020) over at his relatively new site, The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Jérôme Melançon | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2020

Staple bound, 20 pages | Purchase

Phenomena elemental and urban, the in-betweens of car seats and hotel coffee, come apart and rejoin, redisclose themselves. “Les racines sarclées, les mains pleines de tiges / Sudden desire to hear into everything,” to go underground, where “D’une douceur pressentie l’humidité suinte.” Above, “Le ciel s’incline,” and “Directions shift, pull the window in the storm’s way…” Disjointed, the world’s hidden forces fracture the body (“…cracked hands and brilliance”) and create blockages (“Enfermement des veines…”), tangling territories and sense. Is that a bird or a streetlight? A song or an error? Carried by Coup’s poem-logic of translingual rhyme, we drift into a dream—smack dab.

Bryce Warnes reviews Dennis Cooley's i see i said (2020) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for Dennis Cooley's i see i said (2020) over at his brand-new site, The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Dennis Cooley | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2020

Staple bound, 20 pages | Purchase

Keep your eye on the ball—changeups abound: Between you and I, sight and sound, left field experiments and lyrical crowd pleasers. Centrepiece “take me out to the ball game” prosily puns upon a dugout lexicon—”I’m a bit wild on the mound, it’s true,” admits the speaker—to deliver an ars knuckleball. Elsewhere, the titular poem belongs to a suite of stuttering dialogues, woven throughout, that unstitch subjectivity. And the playful “chimera” picks apart our urge “to say what we would / say if we knew / what we thought / or what we thought / we could say / to one another.” Who’s on first?