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The External Combustion Engine
Poetry. "Michael Ives's cunningly quarried prose plinths are stippled with the comedy and cruelty of Marcel Duchamp's and Raymond Roussel's wildest inventions. Move over, machines celibataires—THE EXTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE has arrived, and it's hummin'!"—John Ashbery. "These narratives are intensely, wildly logical, sensual, humorous, transgressive—catapults into the particulars of an exquisite knowledge for which you can't know you are being prepared. The high-wire pleasures and exhilarations of reading are happily reawakened by this brilliant, surprising book"—Joan Retallack.
125 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
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June 9, 2024I was hot n cold on Part 1, didn't connect with The Seizure, and I loved Gong Drops
October 23, 2007
In many ways, "The External Combustion Engine" was like "Bird and Forest," which I read earlier in the year. A tasteful package containing pretension within. And yes, there was plenty of it in this collection of short pieces. Why I give this two stars, however, and furthermore, plan to keep it to re-read, is what sets it apart.
Sure, there's a lot of very difficult work in here... difficult to be difficult, to put on intellectual airs... but there is much beauty, much to provoke thought, to chuckle at. Some pieces are dreamlike, others seem to outwardly mock the sort of pretension Ives can't see in his own writing... in this case, the words strive so hard to become the most tenuous of confusing metaphors that you can tell the text is in jest.
While the best writing is found in the brief passages in part I, part III, a collection of what could be psalms and proverbs called "Gong Drops," sums up the entire experience in brief snippets. It gives you a feel for just what sort of pretension to expect when Ives goes for it:
Nature carves and enamels its canines to resemble "ladybugs" so exactly that we come to have "ladybugs" by forgetting, or never knowing, nature's unquenchable blood thirst--the thirstier, the more unassuming. "Look mommy, a ladybug!"
But there are also flashes of intrigue among the brief, context-less words:
How admirably the ebb and flow of crowds would serve as an abacus to the day, if only the day possessed hands.
And it is those flashes, those glimpses of beauty, both in image and words, that make this book worth keeping. It will forever be imperfect (the lengthy, tangential rant that is section 2 may never see the light of day again), but there is enough beauty in the simpler works to make me hold out hope, that I may understand more the more I review.
Sure, there's a lot of very difficult work in here... difficult to be difficult, to put on intellectual airs... but there is much beauty, much to provoke thought, to chuckle at. Some pieces are dreamlike, others seem to outwardly mock the sort of pretension Ives can't see in his own writing... in this case, the words strive so hard to become the most tenuous of confusing metaphors that you can tell the text is in jest.
While the best writing is found in the brief passages in part I, part III, a collection of what could be psalms and proverbs called "Gong Drops," sums up the entire experience in brief snippets. It gives you a feel for just what sort of pretension to expect when Ives goes for it:
Nature carves and enamels its canines to resemble "ladybugs" so exactly that we come to have "ladybugs" by forgetting, or never knowing, nature's unquenchable blood thirst--the thirstier, the more unassuming. "Look mommy, a ladybug!"
But there are also flashes of intrigue among the brief, context-less words:
How admirably the ebb and flow of crowds would serve as an abacus to the day, if only the day possessed hands.
And it is those flashes, those glimpses of beauty, both in image and words, that make this book worth keeping. It will forever be imperfect (the lengthy, tangential rant that is section 2 may never see the light of day again), but there is enough beauty in the simpler works to make me hold out hope, that I may understand more the more I review.
June 28, 2012
I have finally set this one aside after reading through it very slowly. What a nifty book and pleasantly odd...I liked it quite well, it was fun to trip over this little book in my reading travels looking for something new and different to read (and I like little books to read in between the big ones.) But this little book is about big things! I picked it up on a whim not making the connection that Michael was a quiet boy I once knew in school, when I thought about it, I wasn't sure if it was possibly the same Michael...I guess it is...somehow it doesn't surprise me that he'd be a writer...he'd probably would be surprised that I'm a writer too. It's fascinating where life takes one fifty years later...and to go on to construct beautiful books is a special thing for us to do!
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