Vowels

by Bruce Andrews

Andrew's fourth book, Vowels was published in 1976 by Michael Lally's O Press (New York). Cover by Anne Sue Hirshorn incorporating a drawing by Leon Schlossberg. Edition of 250.

Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1976

About the author

Bruce Andrews is an experimental poet, performance artist, literary theorist & recently retired (after 38 years) left-wing professor of political science. As Musical Director for Sally Silvers & Dancers, he has created sound designs and, in performance, live mixes of music & text for over two decades of performances.Most recent of a dozen or so big books is last year’s "You Can’t Have Everything… Where Would You Put It!", followed by a chapbook, "Yessified (Sally’s Edit)" celebrating the Andrews Symposium and its expanded archive, online at www.fordhamenglish.com/bruce-andrews, with links to interviews, performance texts, poetry, collaborations, and critical essays on his work. Another online archive (and interactive project) materialized on April 1, 2014 as a curated 25 hour ‘twitter sculpture’ [Twitter.com @BruceAndrews25h], a 300 poem sequence.

Reviews

[Nico · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really am very interested in what Andrews is doing in this early chapbooks. I don’t necessarily have the critical framework to explain in full terms what he is doing theoretically and if it is entirely accomplished work or not. But, just like Clark Coolidge’s work, there is a certain sound & new use of language & syntax that I adore in his work. To follow the sound and juxtaposition within language as the poems self-reflexively construct themselves from colloquial everyday language, these poems treat words in their thingsness, every word is it’s own event, a haecceity. Or rather, maybe more so this works at the level of the sentence as many of these short numbered section poems are working at the level of the “new” sentence. As I have been reiterating, Andrews’ work points towards the edge of words and doesn’t necessarily follow the centre — their strict denotative meanings, going for an opening towards new connotations and juxtapositions of unfamiliar words together. Which is also to say, given the supposed difficulty of these works (and all of so-called Language Writing), that Andrews doesn’t just toss meaning and referentiality out the door, these poems do mean and create meaning, create sense. If these are working in the methodology of the “new sentence,” one wld have to then ponder, this wld mean a “new” sentence must create new sense, new meanings, new everything. The poem itself is made anew inside this new method. All of this to say, these poems aren’t trying to be obscure, confusing, or hard. They are difficult poems no doubt about it. But they aren’t necessarily saying to the reader “I’m a hard poem haha! I’m playing a language game with you and you can’t figure me out!” Rather they are inviting the reader to begin thinking about their own relationship to words, to language, to syntax and sentences. I think that’s a major part of language-oriented writing and creating a critical space for the reader to generatively question language and what it does and can do. It does invite more questioning than answer, and that is part of how these poems are meant to open the door to more writing. Because wreading is writing as writing is wreading. They may seem nonsensical and strange, imprecise and meaningless — but these are also poems that resist the idea of the well-wrought urn. They don’t have to be “precise,” just as Coolidge says, the writer can allow the poem to lead them into a new space of imagination and creation. The writer doesn’t need to make the poem encase an idea and precisely use the words to coalesce towards an idea or emotion, it’s a new form of communication, maybe even expression (although that word might make those language writers cringe). The poem doesn’t need to be “precise” in these terms. Andrews’ work does all these things and what he does in these chapbooks is really radical in opening these spaces. It’s sort of a cartography for the work to come, from himself and from others who wld read these early chapbooks and begin working from the same newly made space, asking the same questions about language, poetics, and such. Again, I loved it!