This Is What Happens When Talk Ends

by Gale Nelson

Poetry. There are eight sets of eight poems. All poems within a set follow the vowel pattern of a particular passage from Shakespeare. They could be called homovocalic translations of Shakespeare though they ignore his content while trying to build toward their own coherence. The sets are not presented in linear succession. Instead, the poems are arranged in a chess pattern, the earliest surviving knight's circuit, attributed to al-Adli ar-Rumi of Baghdad and presumed to date from A.D. 840.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2011

Reviews

[Andy Stallings · Rating 1 out of 5]

Special dislike of this one. I couldn't finish it -- or rather, I wouldn't finish it, because I can see that there is no need. It is a conceptual/procedural book, and reading it is miserable, but since the concept and procedure hold throughout, there is no hope of that misery lifting. I made an effort to continue reading past the point of that identification, anyhow. But it's stultifying. The procedures were many, explained in a note, and involve vowel reconstructions of Shakespeare passages. But the author mentions losing steam on the project, and he might well have taken note -- these are great examples of the limitations of procedure, even when the procedure itself is moderately interesting. My question would be -- as a poet, why set your goals so low as "It was a given that Shakespeare had found the perfect route; my goal was simply to get somewhere else." What would you demonstrate in doing so? That by driving down the same highway two drivers see different things? But if one has seen them more radiantly, what's valuable in another seeing them incoherently or dully? I'm not sure.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too much contrivance