Fault Tree

by Kathryn L. Pringle

fault tree is a book-length poem divided into three connected effects stemming from one undesired time. This text poses time as a governing body overthrown by a simple mental repositioning―only ‘inescapable’ because so few have tried to escape. Using interrupted narrative and a deceptively simple diction, the poem follows one character through his quest to wrangle time and prove his own sanity as well as time’s true nature. Through his relating to time, questions of place, class, politics, and culture are cast as the inextricable results of time’s manipulation.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[Jude Silberfeld-Grimaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know anything about poetry so don’t expect a structured review here. Until very recently I had never read poetry for pleasure, and my last experience was in high school. I did have favourites then though, Pierre de Ronsard and Victor Hugo for beautiful music, Guillaume Apollinaire and Raymond Queneau for fun.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century and one of my favourite people happens to be an award-winning poet. I have been struggling with focus and don’t really manage to sit down and read at the moment (renewed apologies to authors and publishers waiting on my reviews), but I figured a short book of poetry was worth a try.

It’s worth so much more.

I won’t pretend I’m unbiased—as stated above, the author is someone I love. That said, liking/loving someone isn’t a guarantee that their works will touch me.

In this instance, however, it did.

I only put it down so I could have lunch with my family. Had I been on my own, food would have had to wait, and that’s saying a lot—food being life and all that.

So, mind blown. Now, to explain why… Remember when I said I struggled with focus? I had no issue here, I was engaged from page one, from both form and substance. I want to quote a gigantic number of sentences, and won’t quote any since I can’t choose. I love the melody, I love the rhythm, I love the clashes and the interactions, I love the meaning and that it made me think. I love that it’s about time as a construct (which, as a neurodivergent person, I say all the time) and the weight of words, that it’s political and deceptively naive, that it’s clever and relatable. I love the mood and the way it left my stomach twisted, still twisting.

I was already impatient for kathryn l. pringle’s debut novel Cavendish House (yes, it’s queer) but now I can’t wait to see how this writing translates into a horror novel.

Video review: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9sJKj... (and a blooper you'll want to watch: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9ukE8...)

Read all my reviews on my website (and please get your books from the affiliation links!): Jude in the Stars

[Michael Lindgren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, my friend Ron Kolm hated this book, but I didn't think it was so bad. I showed it to Ron in the back room of Muldoon's Pub on East 43rd Street, and he showered it with disdain; he was incensed. Fault Tree is the work of a young Californian language poet named Kathryn Pringle. Like most of its genre, it is a poetry of fracture, mystery, and inflection; the question with such verse, which tends towards the inscrutable and random-seeming, is whether it hangs together tightly enough to transcend its opacity. I think these poems do some of the time, but just barely. The general effect is one of philosophical concerns shattered and made ethereal and jangled -- "The precision of my rigid body in motion / has been mathematically proven" -- and of sinister totalitarian paranoia run rampant, fueled by psychotropic drugs and hallucinations of violence, of "a love / poem with blood and snow." The end result is diffuse but intermittently evocative.

[Melody · Rating 5 out of 5]

"fault tree" by kathryn l. pringle, goodreads.com. get it right.

this middle-aged, youthfully joyful, appropriately cynical american poet knows her own power and the power of others, the power of time & space, and the power of words, even of words spoken in illness. i have been meditating on fault tree since i heard the majority of it on thursday evening, read it through on friday, and re-visited passages & pages since. i almost gave this book three stars, though, because it has a bird in it and she calls me, the reader, an "asshole" / "not much of an artist". but then i realized it's all about context. and language, of course. <3

[Zack]

Loved this book...still loving it...it is worth reading more than a few times