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Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems
Since his post-9/11 essay “The Emergency,” Andrew Joron has been regarded as one of American poetry’s most profound practitioners. Trance Archive draws on over twenty years of Joron’s work, from his early science fiction poetry to his later fusion of surrealist romanticism and avant-garde materialism, into what he calls “speculative lyric.” Infused with radical politics, Joron’s poetry takes inspiration from chaos and complexity theory, and reflects personal associations ranging from anarchist philosopher Paul Feyerabend to surrealist mystic Philip Lamantia. The third volume in our vbrant Spotlight series, Trance Archive affirms Joron’s place among major contemporary poets.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
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About the author
Andrew Joron
43 books20 followersAndrew Joron was raised in Stuttgart, Germany, Lowell, MA, and Missoula, MT. He studied under anarchist philosopher Paul Feyerabend at UC Berkeley, obtaining a BA in philosophy of science. Joron began writing science-fiction poetry before turning to surrealist-influenced lyric, reflecting his association with Philip Lamantia. His translations from German include philosopher Ernst Bloch's Literary Essays.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 31, 2012
"Joron, far more so than any other of his contemporaries, is a magician, an alchemist of words; his work is modern, has a contemporary freshness to it, yet also has an undertone of antiquity, of ivy-clad towers and ancient residues. . . . Reading his work is like entering a hall of mirrors."—John Olson, Tillalala Chronicles
"Andrew Joron is a modern-day alchemist . . . Though aligned with the revolutionary impulse behind Surrealism — the conjuring of paradox to expand the possible — he appreciates the movement’s aesthetic limitations and has somehow, miraculously, managed to create poetry attuned to materialist critiques of language without abandoning any of the art’s mystery and metaphysical inquiry." —Noah Eli Gordon, Bookforum
"An anthology of [Joron's:] work from his best to his rarest, to others, anyone who wants an introduction to Joron's work would do well with Trance Archive, a top pick for poetry collections."—The Midwest Book Review
"If the densely covered sheets of what I'm tempted to call [Alice] Notley's 'trance-scriptions'were reduced to their barest minimum, the distillate might be the kind of poem found in Andrew Joron's Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems."—Steve Evans, The Nation
“Joron is one of the few poets who has identified and embraced the possibility for surrealism and Language poetry to coexist in productive synergy. . . . [He] pioneers a unique hybrid 'genre' of surrealism and science fiction . . . Whether the surrealist project was abandoned ('destroyed') or never fully realized ('not-yet-invented'), Joron’s work ambitiously attempts to resuscitate it by merging it with the 21st century version of Marxist poetry and making it relevant to post-structuralism.”—TheThe Poetry Blog
"Andrew Joron is a modern-day alchemist . . . Though aligned with the revolutionary impulse behind Surrealism — the conjuring of paradox to expand the possible — he appreciates the movement’s aesthetic limitations and has somehow, miraculously, managed to create poetry attuned to materialist critiques of language without abandoning any of the art’s mystery and metaphysical inquiry." —Noah Eli Gordon, Bookforum
"An anthology of [Joron's:] work from his best to his rarest, to others, anyone who wants an introduction to Joron's work would do well with Trance Archive, a top pick for poetry collections."—The Midwest Book Review
"If the densely covered sheets of what I'm tempted to call [Alice] Notley's 'trance-scriptions'were reduced to their barest minimum, the distillate might be the kind of poem found in Andrew Joron's Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems."—Steve Evans, The Nation
“Joron is one of the few poets who has identified and embraced the possibility for surrealism and Language poetry to coexist in productive synergy. . . . [He] pioneers a unique hybrid 'genre' of surrealism and science fiction . . . Whether the surrealist project was abandoned ('destroyed') or never fully realized ('not-yet-invented'), Joron’s work ambitiously attempts to resuscitate it by merging it with the 21st century version of Marxist poetry and making it relevant to post-structuralism.”—TheThe Poetry Blog
August 31, 2011
“The perpetual emotion of a star-like story.”
The poems (“ciphers, sapphires”) in Andrew Joron’s Trance Archive do not assume a world; they invent worlds (“Blue diagrams of a world without gravity”) by sounding them out (“the spiral is made to spill its center”). They are worlds occurring simultaneously at subatomic and astronomical scales: “inside the head of a flower/The sun’s/a swinging pendulum.” Sometimes their sound waves explore scale from the vantage of thought-experiment or perspective: “Everywhere the light aims at a vanishing point.” These ciphers are like sapphires of actively charged particles imagining themselves into any form and thus forming into more: “info-mosaics” & “…the unopened eye of a window.” I love this poetry for the way it sonically and conceptually enacts the “…desperate trance!” relationship between poem and world(s): “A literal star impaled at the imaginary center.”
The poems (“ciphers, sapphires”) in Andrew Joron’s Trance Archive do not assume a world; they invent worlds (“Blue diagrams of a world without gravity”) by sounding them out (“the spiral is made to spill its center”). They are worlds occurring simultaneously at subatomic and astronomical scales: “inside the head of a flower/The sun’s/a swinging pendulum.” Sometimes their sound waves explore scale from the vantage of thought-experiment or perspective: “Everywhere the light aims at a vanishing point.” These ciphers are like sapphires of actively charged particles imagining themselves into any form and thus forming into more: “info-mosaics” & “…the unopened eye of a window.” I love this poetry for the way it sonically and conceptually enacts the “…desperate trance!” relationship between poem and world(s): “A literal star impaled at the imaginary center.”
April 25, 2010
Joron's approach to the negative linguistic "sun" at the heart of the surrealist image is evident in the first stanza of "Spine to Spin, Spoke to Speak," from Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems: "The pilot alone knows | That the plot is missing its | Eye." This book makes American poetry seem interesting. Two-thirds of it collects work from two volumes I read here for the first time: The Removes (1999) and Fathom (2003). There's something playful, hard, and deeply acculturated about Joron's emergence from Eighties surrealism into a "speculative lyric" that keeps its distance from the San Francisco language writers. The strength of the work throughout earns its way with me.
March 27, 2025
Joron’s work reads like a synthetic cybernetic consciousness formulating found poetry from an otherworldly encyclopedia of futurist mysticism. Absolutely fascinating—the play of language, sound, and alien imagery.
July 21, 2013
Joron exercises sonic acrobatics and musical agility to recapitulate the emergence of meaning, or light, from the opacity of sound."
From "Mazed Interior"
Cogs & cogs that cannot turn
to recognitions: such dogs in the dark noonday!
As if the tongue told & tolled
Among
the melancholic arcades.
Where the moods advance toward the modes.
Time to try the knot, the Not
Or to be caught
Forever in nerve-traceries of Beauty . . .
Unstrung, the structure is sound.
From "Mazed Interior"
Cogs & cogs that cannot turn
to recognitions: such dogs in the dark noonday!
As if the tongue told & tolled
Among
the melancholic arcades.
Where the moods advance toward the modes.
Time to try the knot, the Not
Or to be caught
Forever in nerve-traceries of Beauty . . .
Unstrung, the structure is sound.
February 9, 2022
Something peculiar and all but inimitable occurs throughout Joron’s writings which is hard for the layman to precisely describe or capture, perhaps the best way I can think of conceptualizing it is he breathes life into the words themselves and they assume altogether a will of their very own, spring up quite spontaneously and begin bickering amongst themselves downright cantankerously. If often bewildering it is consistently a pleasure to witness the sport of, as meanings collide, language evolves and shifts, homonyms duke it out amongst themselves to riveting effect. The closest phenomenon I can equate it to are the masterworks of Inger Christensen and Cathy Park Hong, if you enjoy this you must investigate them posthaste, and if they are not your cup of tea you may be equally flummoxed by what’s brewing herein. Oh, I should mention that amidst the surrealism there are also some wonderfully intriguing science fiction poems which are great fun and I’ll need to investigate further examples of in his earlier collections. If I understood correctly this represents a curated selection of Joron’s life work spanning decades, and indeed the range and progression demonstrated throughout is a further marvel to witness in and of itself. Wild stuff, on the advanced side but worth the effort, and astonishingly readable considering. I blasted through this thing nearly cover to cover in two sittings, riveted.
March 24, 2020
(rating: two stars)
Eh, I found it to read like a contemporary update of Wallace Stevens at his worst: a trifling mix of unrestrained word-play and vague, philosophical pretensions. Actually, no; I don't think Stevens entirely deserves this unflattering comparison. At Joron's worst, he writes as if he were the "poet" behind that Fage Yogurt commercial narrated by Willem Dafoe--but with a B.S. degree in both senses of the abbreviation!
It sounds like Dr. Seuss, too, but I'd rather attend a seussical than read another line of this poetry: "Mine to ask a mask to say, A is not A.\ No one, ever the contrarian, to answer[....]\ What is the word for getting words & forgetting?\ Might night right sight?" And this was one of the newer poems, which goes to show that wisdom and age are sometimes mutually exclusive.
If you want some neo-surrealist wizardry that displays real vision and erudition, almost anything by Will Alexander is better than this, in my opinion.
Eh, I found it to read like a contemporary update of Wallace Stevens at his worst: a trifling mix of unrestrained word-play and vague, philosophical pretensions. Actually, no; I don't think Stevens entirely deserves this unflattering comparison. At Joron's worst, he writes as if he were the "poet" behind that Fage Yogurt commercial narrated by Willem Dafoe--but with a B.S. degree in both senses of the abbreviation!
It sounds like Dr. Seuss, too, but I'd rather attend a seussical than read another line of this poetry: "Mine to ask a mask to say, A is not A.\ No one, ever the contrarian, to answer[....]\ What is the word for getting words & forgetting?\ Might night right sight?" And this was one of the newer poems, which goes to show that wisdom and age are sometimes mutually exclusive.
If you want some neo-surrealist wizardry that displays real vision and erudition, almost anything by Will Alexander is better than this, in my opinion.
April 13, 2018
Although I have been reading considerably more poetry, the last time that I remember being so fascinated with a book of poems was when I read Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red . In addition to being an investigation of language, this sampling of Andrew Joron's work muddies the water between surreal, science, fiction, poetry, and dissolves language in a way that is neither heavy handed nor obtuse. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection and now I want to get my hands on his other works!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews