EMPTIED OF ALL SHIPS

by Stacy Szymaszek, Brenda Iijima (Artist), Drew Kunz (Drawings)

Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. "Stacy Szymaszek places her readers in a border situation. Here is a poetics of extreme condensation. 'ink a hinge here/ 'n here/ 'n mother/ make me limber.' Where traces are, lines remain. Magic is implicated in every shot and countershot. This is idiosyncratic and stunning work."--Susan Howe "Each poem is what I am looking a resonance with a particular location, an intelligence unafraid of its humanity, a sort of desperate adequacy with the people or objects that Szymaszek encounters."--Etel Adnan "EMPTIED OF ALL SHIPS is a setting out into crucial waters. Each word here has its own weight and position--its own vital movement between poles of loss and discovery. With our sight-lines thus widened, the observance itself becomes activated--another mode of transport. A poetry of brevity is a tough task (especially the word-as-line), but in these pages it registers as achievement."--George Albon "These stanza-pearls are dressed in tight corsets emulating a Roman, masculine brevity. Her use of craft ('last to touch / your craft') tells us shucks we are outside the law..."--Julian T. Brolaski "Reading EMPTIED OF ALL SHIPS...one is lulled, as by waves, by narrow lines of verse flowing, page by page, most of them composed of only one or two words. The whole book takes seafaring as its métier, and this is both literal and metaphoric, historical and current, about craft and emotion."--Vincent Katz "To read EMPTIED OF ALL SHIPS is to enter an unfixed universe of ideas with taut internal logic, multiple shifts in perspective, syntactic gaps, and a strapping, nearly epic synechdoche. It is a world where sensual juxtapositions abound and elude, keeping the reader off balance. The form is at once concrete and motion-filled... [D]rawings throughout the book act as cartography to mark our way through the unsettled whole, while Brenda Iijima's ghostly and panoramic cover art brings us right into the vortex of water's creative and destructive force."--Denise Nico Leto

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

What appears to be a list of words ARRANGED more than WRITTEN, an engrossing meaning emerges from the rich, sad sounds. It was a unique reading experience for me, a mix of fast and slow eye movements, a race for the brain to keep up with the words as I scanned down the page.

It's also a really handsome book, with a nice blue and brown color combo.

[Maud · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know if I like poetry anymore

[Juliet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall not my style, but I can appreciate this book's style, especially if I step outside of my own subjectivity.

Definitely more watery then meaty--and at times it even felt a bit ethereal or mystical to me.

The last section of the book, 'some mariners' has more of a carnality about it and that section was my favorite.

***

I have to admit I have something of a bias against short lines (and most of the lines in this collection are only one or two words long). I just don't tend to relate to such short lines, as my mind doesn't respond well to minimalism, sparseness, or lots of empty space--and thus it's difficult for such arrangements to move me.

Having said that, this book is certainly evocative in its own style (so far) and seems to be carefully constructed.

We'll see how I feel as I continue my reading experience.

Here's a little passage that appealed to me:

'sailmaker
stitches you
inside a sail'

So far, the book puts me mind of watery passage, transport, maybe culling certain small details towards transcendence?