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Little Red Leaves Textile Series #5
A Reduction
This 20-page chapbook meditates (or perhaps just daydreams) on the microscopic, playfully and poignantly describing the tininesses that permeate everyday life. A Reduction also features microscope “slides” inserted into the pages: enjoy pictures of magnified mustard seeds, onion skin, twigs and string.
- GenresPoetry
21 pages, Chapbook (Machine Stitched)
First published September 15, 2011
1 person is currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Jimmy Lo
3 books10 followersJimmy Lo lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works for a public library. In 2010 he co-created Free Poems On Demand, a pop-up venue where passersby suggest poem topics and receive on-the-spot compositions. More of his writing can be found on his website.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 17, 2011
Beautifully constructed and lyrically compelling, the slides not only illustrate but allow the reader to read back through the text and to focus on slices of words carved out of context like specimens. Biology, artificiality, limits, and consciousness are discussed in the text and reflected as well in the design of the book.
Want to read
September 15, 2011Oh, one of my smartest and coolest bookfriends wrote a book of poetry with slides in it??
January 5, 2016
In the center of the tea my consciousness has found a home.Jimmy Lo writes in miniature here, shortening his gaze and combing through life at a level far lower than where we usually look. What would being so small feel like, inside and out, how would the world appear, what would matter and what would such a dramatic shift in perspective suddenly render moot. The field of vision shrinks but the focus sharpens. It's like climbing on board a poet's Fantastic Voyage, imbued with esoteric imaginings eked out in terse, plain language, yet ambiguous enough to interlock in infinite ways. With its hand-sewn recycled fabric cover and interior color photo slides mounted like windows, affording fleeting glimpses of each coming page, this chapbook is a tiny wonder. I am still rereading and likely will be for some time to come.
September 28, 2019
So I found a handful of the sumptuously-designed chapbooks brought out by little red leaves press in 2011, the aptly-dubbed "textile series." "This little red leaves textile series chapbook was lovingly sewn with recycled bedsheets and shower curtains" the back matter informs us.
Like, Wow. Think of all the karmic resonance of intimacy in the materials holding the poetry. I'm not sure if recycled here means "remaindered" or "job lot purchase," i.e. upcycled. Maybe someone actually slept on these sheets which form the covers of these booklets. If so, they were well-mannered sleepers and didn't do anything so gauche as eating in bed. But then you're probably having other thoughts about whether or not you want someone's recycled bed sheets in your library. People don't only eat crackers in bed. But I'm not squeamish and enough about the format. (It's pretty, some nice patterns.) You might remember that the Futurists bound some of their books with wallpaper and such. Those look cool too.
This particular book by Jimmy Lo is even more visually beautiful inside. A Reduction is all about what Steve Martin was about in the seventies, getting small, a routine few probably even remember now. ("Let's get small" was a catch-phrase meant to surreally counter the offer "Let's get high.") The speaker in Lo's poem or prose poem or series of prose poems or small work of fiction (no point putting pins in the butterfly since we're not sure what species it is) expresses a desire to be minuscule and explore the psychology of miniaturism, the benefits it might offer. He or she talks about getting down to worm-size, but it's clear this person (is it a person speaking?) actually has aspirations of gaining entrance to the microbial world.
I said "visually beautiful inside." Yes. There are these little windows cut out of the page and instead of stained glass there are images on transparencies that strike one sometimes as scientific slides, other times as Polaroids of the macroscopic world printed on acetate. I thought I saw a nude and then some old stone stairs with vegetal growth on them. That is to say, the images are ambiguous. The author actually tells you what the images are in the back of the book, but I won't say here. I think there is a spoiler above in the press release for this book. But the images will change when you see them different times. You won't be able to pin them down. Because these are transparencies, you can look either way through the little windows in the pages. So you see text through the images, both ways. It's very much a livre d'artiste.
The writing itself reminded me of both Henri Michaux (the obsession with other worlds and their beings) and Lisa Jarnot (the playful and smart babytalk).
And among them, lesser and lesser of the self.
Of even gravity that is no object, and surfaces
according to other rules, where surfeit bodies
tumble against the hard of earth, that unbearable
distance to the cold sore of knowledge, where off
and off I slant until I reach my subject, my sub-
jectivity.
That's actually a significant portion of the book's text, since it is such a small chap. But it gives you a feel for the hallucinogenic nature of the language.
The images are clearly part of the gestalt of the book and its reading experience.
It's a nice little volume to add to your menagerie of books which act like animals, insects, or microbes.
Like, Wow. Think of all the karmic resonance of intimacy in the materials holding the poetry. I'm not sure if recycled here means "remaindered" or "job lot purchase," i.e. upcycled. Maybe someone actually slept on these sheets which form the covers of these booklets. If so, they were well-mannered sleepers and didn't do anything so gauche as eating in bed. But then you're probably having other thoughts about whether or not you want someone's recycled bed sheets in your library. People don't only eat crackers in bed. But I'm not squeamish and enough about the format. (It's pretty, some nice patterns.) You might remember that the Futurists bound some of their books with wallpaper and such. Those look cool too.
This particular book by Jimmy Lo is even more visually beautiful inside. A Reduction is all about what Steve Martin was about in the seventies, getting small, a routine few probably even remember now. ("Let's get small" was a catch-phrase meant to surreally counter the offer "Let's get high.") The speaker in Lo's poem or prose poem or series of prose poems or small work of fiction (no point putting pins in the butterfly since we're not sure what species it is) expresses a desire to be minuscule and explore the psychology of miniaturism, the benefits it might offer. He or she talks about getting down to worm-size, but it's clear this person (is it a person speaking?) actually has aspirations of gaining entrance to the microbial world.
I said "visually beautiful inside." Yes. There are these little windows cut out of the page and instead of stained glass there are images on transparencies that strike one sometimes as scientific slides, other times as Polaroids of the macroscopic world printed on acetate. I thought I saw a nude and then some old stone stairs with vegetal growth on them. That is to say, the images are ambiguous. The author actually tells you what the images are in the back of the book, but I won't say here. I think there is a spoiler above in the press release for this book. But the images will change when you see them different times. You won't be able to pin them down. Because these are transparencies, you can look either way through the little windows in the pages. So you see text through the images, both ways. It's very much a livre d'artiste.
The writing itself reminded me of both Henri Michaux (the obsession with other worlds and their beings) and Lisa Jarnot (the playful and smart babytalk).
And among them, lesser and lesser of the self.
Of even gravity that is no object, and surfaces
according to other rules, where surfeit bodies
tumble against the hard of earth, that unbearable
distance to the cold sore of knowledge, where off
and off I slant until I reach my subject, my sub-
jectivity.
That's actually a significant portion of the book's text, since it is such a small chap. But it gives you a feel for the hallucinogenic nature of the language.
The images are clearly part of the gestalt of the book and its reading experience.
It's a nice little volume to add to your menagerie of books which act like animals, insects, or microbes.
August 1, 2012
To fail to be human to be human again. I liked this.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews